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ERNEST BELFORT BAX 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



The 


cardinal 


idea 


of the French 


Revo- 


lution 


was 


the 


political 


emancipat 


ion of 


the m 


iddle 


class. 
















E. 


Belfort 


Bax. 



THE STORY 

OF THE 



FRENCH REVOLUTION 



eJ^belfort bax 



Author of "The Religion of Socialism," "The Ethics of 
Socialism," "Jean Paul Marat." etc. 



WITH PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

BY 

DANIEL DE LEON 



5 J 3 



NEW YORK 
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY 

19 2 2 






The issue of the French Revolution 
was, as we have seen, the modern world 
of great capital and free trade, as op- 
posed to the old world of land and 
privilege and all that that change im- 
plies. 



E. Belfort Bax. 



g)ClAG90178 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Author's Preface .... - . . v 

Preface to American Edition, by Daniel DeLeon - - ix 

CHAPTER 

I. The Literary Prologue i 

II. The Economic Prelude in the Provinces - - 6 

III. The Opening in Paris ii 

IV. The Bastille 15 

V. The Constitution Mongers 20 

VI. The New Constitution - 24 

VII. A "Constitution" on its Beam Ends - - - 28 

VIII. The Legislative Assembly 32 

IX. The Tenth of August 36 

X. The First Paris Commune and the September 

Massacres -------- 41 

XL The National Convention - - - - - 47 

XII. The Trial and Execution of the King - - 52 

XIII. The Death Struggle between Mountain and 

Gironde - 56 

XIV. Concerning Matters Economic - - - - 60 
XV. The Fall of the Gironde 63 

XVI. The Sansculotte in Power 67 

XVII. The Dictatorship of the Commune - - - 71 

XVIIL The Terror - - - 76 

XIX. The Fall of the Hebertists 80 

XX, The Rule^of Robespierre 85 

XXI. Thermidor 89 

XXII. The Reaction Begins 95 

XXIII. The Reaction Progresses - - - - - 99 

XXIV. The Babceuf Conspiracy and the End of the 

French Revolution 104 

XXV. The National Property no 

XXVI. Conclusion • .--.-.. 115 

xiii 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



E. Belfort Bax Frontis'phece 

facing page 
Rousseau V 

Voltaire . . 1 

MiRABEAU 16 

Danton Z2) 



Thomas Paine ) ^o 

^ I . . 48 

Anacharsis Clootz 



Marat 64 

Hebert . 80 

Robespierre 96 

Babeuf 104 




JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



The following sketch of the course of the French 
Revolution was originally published during 1889 in serial 
form in "Justice," the weekly organ of the Social Demo- 
cratic Federation. It has been revised, corrected, and, 
in some parts, added to, for the present re-issue. It need 
scarcely be said that it in no way pretends to be a com- 
plete history of the great political, social, and intellectual 
movement it describes. The present volume is designed 
primarily as a guide to those who, not having the time 
to study larger works on the subject, yet wish during 
these centennial years to have in a small compass a con- 
nected description of the main events of the French 
Revolution, more especially from the point of view of 
modern Socialism. It is undeniable that there are many 
Englishmen who would indignantly repudiate any asper- 
sions on their education for whom the French Revolution 
means little more than the destruction of one institution 
called the Bastille, the erection of another institution 
called the Guillotine, and the establishment of the Napo- 
leonic Empire on the ruins of both. They have no idea 
of the complex forces, economical, speculative, and po- 
litical, which manifested themselves in the succession of 
crises (scarcely, indeed, of the existence of the crises 
themselves) which took place between the assembling of 
the States-General in 1789, and the suppression of the 
Baboeuf conspiracy in 1796. 

For such as these, and for many others to whom the 
above remarks will not altogether apply, a condensed 



Vi AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

statement of the facts of the French Revolution cannot 
but be desirable, and although there exist summaries 
galore, the writer ventures to think that the present little 
work differs from them in two respects : firstly, in the 
point of view from which the Revolution is viewed, and 
secondly, in the endeavor to throw the principal events 
into as strong relie"^ as possible by the omission of all 
detail which is unessential to the understanding of them. 
Brevity has also been a distinct aim, and for this, as for 
the former reason, much that is in itself interesting has 
been left out. The foregoing especially applies to bio- 
graphical details respecting the chief actors. These have 
been uniformly omitted throughout, as tending to expand 
the sketch indefinitely, and to draw off attention from 
its main purpose. The circumstances of the time and the 
events made the personalities what they were, and there 
is not one of them who, in so far as public life is con- 
cerned, can be regarded otherwise than as the embodi- 
ment of some more or less wide-spread contemporary 
tendency. The actors, therefore, merely cross the stage 
in connection with the principal events in which they 
played a role. Yet, though they may have suddenly be- 
come especially prominent, it must be understood that, in 
almost all cases, they were already familiar to the popu- 
lation of Paris, and, in many cases, of the whole of 
France, as club-orators, parliamentary politicians, or as 
journalists. It is not too much to say that in the French 
Revolution journalism first became a power in the world's 
history. 

Those who seek further details both of the Revolution 
itself and of the life of its leading figures may be re- 
ferred to the larger histories. The admirable history of 
Mr. Morse Stephen now in progress represents by far 
the best work that has as yet been done in English (both 
as regards exhaustiveness and impartiality) in connection 
with the subject. Mr. Stephen's excellent articles in the 
ninth edition of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " may also 



AUTHOR^S PREFACE vii 

be consulted with profit. The French Uterature of the 
subject would, of course, fill libraries. Works such as 
Bougeart's " Marat," Avenel's " Anacharsis Clootz," are 
monuments of industry in research. In spite of the ef- 
forts of French scholars, however, there is much room 
left for original investigation. The British Museum 
alone contains, I believe, upwards of 100,000 newspapers, 
pamphlets, manifestoes, and other documents, many of 
them as yet unarranged and uncatalogued. The amount 
of material in Paris, and in France generally, which has 
not yet been worked is probably incalculable. 

Offense has been given in some quarters at the view 
taken of Robespierre in the following pages. The writer 
can only say that he cannot regard the mere negative 
qualification that Robespierre has been in general at- 
tacked by the Reaction in conjunction with other leaders 
as of itself entitling him to the esteem of modern Demo- 
crats or Socialists in the teeth of the undeniable facts of 
the case. The treacherous surrender of the Dantonists, 
the judicial murder of the Hebertists, the law of Prairial, 
are these things not written in history? The fact is, 
Robespierre was a petit bourgeois, a Philistine to the 
backbone, who desired a Republic of petit bourgeois 
virtues, with himself at the head, and was prepared to 
wade through a sea of blood for the accomplishment of 
his end. Napoleon had a truer sense of the case than 
other Reactionists, when, as is reported, he was inclined 
to hail Robespierre as an unsuccessful predecessor in the 
work of " restoring order " and " saving society " — in 
the interest, of course, of the middle-classes. With these 
few words of preface the volume is left to the considera- 
tion of the reader, in the hope that it may afford him at 
least some light on the general bearings of the history of 
the French Revolution. 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 



The French Revolution is an inexhaustible quarry. 
Many works have been written upon it ; many more will 
be written; and safe it is to predict that something of 
value will be brought out in all. For all that, what has 
been brought out is ample to justify the popular senti- 
ment that the subject is one of deep and lasting import- 
ance. 

But it is not merely in a general sense that the story 
of the French Revolution has permanent interest to the 
American reader. It is interesting to him in a special 
sense. Especially if the American reader be a student, 
he will find the story of the French Revolution to be of 
invaluable aid to his understanding and appreciating those 
features of the story of the American Revolution with- 
out the understanding and appreciation of which the 
flavor of the American Revolution is lost, and many of 
the lessons of both are very materially forfeited. 

" Same causes lead to same results." Here is a maxim 
as true as it is exposed to grave error. " Causes " run 
imperceptibly into " results," and the reaction of " re- 
sults " upon " causes " is so subtle that the two are often 
confused. Moreover, it is as important as it is often 
difficult to separate " causes " from " accompaniments " 
and properly group them. These are the pitfalls into 
which the superficial reader falls, and due to which the 
lessons of history are mainly lost to him. The story of 
the French Revolution furnishes an instance, and the 

ix 



X PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 

instance is brought out all the clearer by comparison with 
the story of the American Revolution. 

The French Revolution, like the American, w^as the 
revolution of the bourgeois or oncoming capitalist class. 
And yet we find that, on the one hand, the identity of 
the " cause " is lost to many who, wholly unequipped 
with the key to the understanding of history and blinded' 
by the " accompaniments " of each, consider them wholly 
distinct phenomena; while, on the other hand, others, 
somewhat but insufficiently equipped with the historical 
key, detect the identity of the '' cause," but relapse into 
barren dogmatism through their incapacity to distinguish 
between " accompaniments." To the one and the other 
the full significance of the history of the French Revolu- 
tion is lost, and along with that is lost the pregnant 
features of the American Revolution. 

Numerous are the passages in Belfort Bax' " History 
of the French Revolution " that furnish in hand the 
material with which to contrast the difference in " ac- 
companiments " between the French and the American 
Revolution. Read with an eye to them, his contribution 
to the store of history is of great value to the philosophy 
of history. 

Material interests determine man's view-point. But 
material interests are, in their turn, determined by no one 
circumstance. The material interests that fretted against 
feudal restraints gave general direction to the revolt of 
the French bourgeois, and thereby caused its direction 
to fall within that quarter of the compass into which 
the American Revolution fell. But the exact point of 
the compass touched by each depended upon secondary 
material conditions. With the French Revolution, a suf- 
ficiently defined proletarian class simultaneously mounted 
the historic stage; none such made or could make its 
appearance in the instance of the American Revolution. 
To this secondary material fact touching France, and 
quite clearly brought out by Mr. Bax, is traceable a 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION xi 

feature of the Revolution in France which imparts to 
that historic occurrence a physiognomy not shared by its 
American forerunner, and when properly appreciated, 
elucidates both. 

The utterances of the great figures in the French 
Revolution, of its great apostles, bear for this reason 
interesting comparison with their American kindreds. 
Both sets bourgeois ; both sets, accordingly, resting on 
the private ownership of the means of production, did 
nevertheless present very different aspects. With the 
former, who, living in a densely populated country, with 
natural opportunities already preempted, the declara- 
tions concerning the " Rights of Man," or " Liberty, 
Equality, Fraternity," were an exact reflex of their 
material surrounding: the proletariat was not included 
in the " Rights of Man " or in *' Liberty, Equality, 
Fraternity " ; with the latter, who, finding themselves in 
an immense country, barely populated and natural oppor- 
tunities accessible to all, their utterances included the 
whole human race. 

In the domain of sociology, no less than in that of 
biology, " comparative anatomy " is priceless. A careful 
reading of Mr. Bax' " Story of the French Revolution " 
— for the very reason that it is synoptical — will not 
only enrich the mind on the event that it describes, but 
it will suggest home studies that enlarge the mind. 

Daniel De Leon. 
New York, Oct. i, 1902. 



Copyright 1922 
New York Labor News Co. 




FRANCOIS VOLTAIRE 



THE STORY OF THE FRENCH 
REVOLUTION 



CHAPTER I 

THE LITERARY PROLOGUE 

The cardinal idea of the French Revolution was the 
political emancipation of the middle class. The feudal 
hierarchy of the Middle Ages consisted in France, as in 
other countries, of three main social divisions, or es- 
tates, as they were termed, (i) The superior territorial 
clergy, (2) the nobles, and (3) the smaller landholders, 
the free tenants, and the citizens of the independent town- 
ships. The mere serf or villein (holding by servile ten- 
ure), or common laborer, was like the slave of antiquity, 
unclassified. The possession or (non-servile) tenure of 
land was the condition of freedom. This third estate 
was the germ of our middle class. The great problem 
of the French Revolution, then, was to obtain the inde- 
pendence and domination of the third estate. It is ex- 
pressed in the words of its representative, the Abbe 
Sieyes: "What are we of the third estate? Nothing. 
What would we be? Everything." But, although the 
political supremacy of the middle class was the central 
idea, and the one which it realized (thereby effectually 
refuting a certain order of politicians that declares vio- 
lent revolutions to be necessarily abortive), there were 
issues raised — and not merely raised, but carried for the 



2 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

time being — which went far beyond this. But the flood- 
tide of the Revolution did not represent the permanent 
gain of progress. The waters receded from the ground 
touched at the height of the crisis, leaving the enfran- 
chisement of the bourgeoisie as the one achievement per- 
manently effected. 

Foremost among the precursors of this mighty change 
was the Genevese thinker, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712- 
1778). This remarkable personality may be termed the 
Messiah of the Revolutionary Crisis. His writings were 
quoted and read as a new gospel by well-nigh all the 
prominent leaders of the time. Rousseau's doctrines 
were contained in an early essay on civilization, in his 
Emile, a treatise on Education, and in the Social Contract, 
his chief work. 

In his first essay, Rousseau maintained the superiority 
of the savage over the civilized state, and the whole of 
his subsequent teaching centered in deprecation of the 
hoilowness and artificiality of society, and in an inculca- 
tion of the imperative need of a return, as far as might 
be, to a state of nature in all our relations. This he es- 
pecially applies to education in his Emile, in which he 
sketches the training of a hypothetical child. 

The Social Contract, his greatest work, contains a 
discussion of the first principles of social and political 
order. It is to this work the magic formulas which 
served as watchwords during the Revolution, formulas 
such as " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," " Divine 
Right of Insurrection," the term " Citizen," employed as 
a style of address, and many other things are traceable. 
The title of the work was suggested by Lockers (or rather 
Hobbes' ) supposition of a primitive contract having been 
entered into between governor and governed, which was 
set up in opposition to that of the " divine right " of kings. 
This idea Rousseau accepts in basis, but denies the un- 
conditional nature of the contract affirmed by the orig- 
inators of the theory. No original distinction existed 



THE LITERARY PROLOGUE 3 

between rulers and ruled. Any contract of the kind 
that obtained was merely a political convenience strictly 
subject to conditions. Governors were merely the dele- 
gates or mandatories of the people. The form of gov- 
ernment was to Rousseau more or less a minor matter. 
Although a democracy had the most advantages, yet it 
was quite possible for the mandates of the people to be 
adequately carried out by a special body of men (an 
aristocracy), or even by one man (a king). But every 
form of government was bound to recognize the will of 
the people as sovereign in all things. 

The classicism of the French Revolution is also largely 
represented in Rousseau. The Roman constitution is in- 
variably the source of his illustrations and the model to 
be copied or amended. As regards toleration, Rousseau 
would allow the civil power the right of suppressing views 
which were deemed contrary to good citizenship. Like 
the Romans, he would tolerate all religions equally that 
did not menace the State. There is probably no single 
book that has produced such stupendous results within 
a few years, if at all, as Rousseau's Social Contract. It 
is the text-book of the French Revolution. Every ordi- 
nance, every law, every draft of constitution bears the 
mark of its influence. Although more logical in the work- 
ing out of the theory than its founders, it is needless to 
say that Rousseau's own views are singularly barren and 
unhistorical, as every theory must be that deals only with 
the political side of things. One may admire his loathing 
at the artificiality of the world around him, at the " organ- 
ized hypocrisy " called religion and morality ; but in his 
day it was impossible to uncover its historical roots, and 
hence, to modern ears, his diatribes lose much of their 
effect. 

The influence of the second of the important precur- 
sors of the French Revolution, Frangois-Marie Arouet 
de Voltaire (1694-1778), was much more indirect than 
that of Rousseau. Voltaire's influence was almost purely 



4 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

negative. By his wit he scorched up all the reverence 
remaining in the minds of men for the forms of the old, 
outworn Feudal-Catholic organization. Though there 
was a great amount of adroit self-seeking in Voltaire's 
character, it is as impossible to deny that there was also 
much that was genuine and truly noble in his indigna- 
tion at cruelty and his detestation of Christian hypocrisy, 
as that it produced a far-reaching effect on the events that 
followed. Voltaire, although personally a Frenchman of 
Frenchmen, breathes the spirit of a conscious cosmo- 
politanism and contempt for nationality in his writ- 
ings, which for the first time in history became a popular 
creed during the Revolution, and was expressed in the 
famous appeal of 1793. 

But in this, as in other respects, Voltaire was not alone. 
He partly created and partly reflected the prevalent tone 
of the French salon culture of the eighteenth century. 
This, if we cared to do so, we might trace back in its main 
features to the revival of learning — to the courts of the 
Medicis. And here it may be well to remind our readers, 
in passing, of the truth that individual genius merely 
means the special faculty of expressing that so-called 
" spirit of the age " to which that of preceding ages has 
led up; and that Voltaire and Rousseau merely achieved 
the results they did by reason of their capacity for re- 
producing in words the shapeless thoughts of millions. 
To this, in the case of Voltaire, must be added a special 
width of intellectual sympathy which took in an unusually 
large number of different subjects. 

Besides Rousseau and Voltaire, we must not omit to 
mention the brilliant group of contemporary workers and 
thinkers, headed by Diderot and D*Alembert, who built 
up that monument of laborious industry, the great French 
Encyclopaedia. Immense difficulties attended the publi- 
cation of this important work, notwithstanding that care 
was taken to exclude any expressions of overt contempt 
or hostility towards current prejudices. Again, we must 



THE LITERARY PROLOGUE S 

not forget the Materialist-Atheists, central among whom 
was Baron d'Holbach, the anonymous author of the cele- 
brated System of Nature, a book which, though crude ac- 
cording to modern notions, did good work in its day — 
work which a treatise of more intrinsic philosophical 
value probably would not have achieved. It is noteworthy 
that most of the other prominent names among the pre- 
revolutionary writers, including Rousseau and Voltaire, 
are those of ardent deists. The name of Montesquieu 
(1689-1755), whose Esprit des Lois was a text-book of 
juridical philosophy for the Revolution, must also not be 
omitted from the list of its literary precursors. 

All these men contributed their share in preparing the 
mental foundation for the great upheaval which followed. 
It is strange, however, that not one of them lived to see 
the practical issue of his labors. Rousseau, the most 
directly powerful of them, died eleven years before the 
taking of the Bastille, and Voltaire the same year. 
Diderot lived till 1784; D^Alembert died the previous 
year; Mirabeau, alone of all who had prepared the great 
crisis, lived to see its beginning. But even he succumbed 
in 1 79 1, a year and a half before the actual fall of the 
monarchy. Few of these men saw more than a free- 
thinking aristocracy and literary class. Of the movement 
below they recked little, scarcely perhaps that there was 
such a movement. For although from the beginning of 
the century, notably throughout the reign of Louis XV.. 
there was ever and anon the consciousness of a change 
as imminent, and although twice, in 1734 and in 1771, the 
old system seemed on the point of breaking down in revo- 
lution, yet still it survived, and for aught men could tell, 
was destined to continue to survive many more such 
shocks. The throne, therefore, doubtless to many, seemed 
as secure, religion as popular, as ever, the same throne 
and the same religion which in a few years were destined 
to be involved in so mighty an overthrow^ 



CHAPTER II 

THE ECONOMIC PRELUDE IN THE PROVINCES 

Ten years of bad harvests, aggravated by an effete in- 
dustrial, fiscal, and political system, culminated with the 
summer of 1788. A great drought v^as succeeded by a 
violent hailstorm, which dealt destruction all round. 
The harvest was worse than ever before. All kinds of 
agricultural crops failed miserably all over France, not 
alone wheat and grain generally, but vines, chestnuts, 
olives; in short, all the natural products of consumption 
and exportation. Even what was gathered in was so 
spoiled as to be almost unfit for use. From every pro- 
vince of France came the monotonous tale of ruin, famine, 
starvation. Even the comparatively well-to-do peasant 
farmer could obtain nothing but barley bread of a bad 
quality, and water, while the less well-off had to put up 
with bread made from dried hay or moistened chaff, 
which we are told " caused the death of many children." 
The Englishman, Arthur Young, who was traveling 
through France this year, wherever he went heard noth- 
ing but the story of the distress of the people and the 
dearness of bread. " Such bread as is to be obtained 
tastes of mould, and often produces dysentery and other 
diseases. The larger towns present the same condition, 
as though they had undergone the extremities of a long 
siege. In some places the whole store of corn and barley 
has the stench of putrefaction, and is full of maggots.'* 
To add to the horrors of the situation, upon the hot and 
dry summer followed a winter of unparalleled severity. 
The new year of 1789 opened with the Seine frozen over 
from Paris to Havre. No such weather had been ex- 

6 



ECONOMIC PRELUDE IN THE PROVINCES 7 

perienced since 1709. As the spring advanced the misery 
increased. The industrial crisis became acute in the 
towns, thousands of workmen were thrown out of em- 
ployment owing to the introduction of recently invented 
machinery from England, which was beginning to super- 
sede hand-labor in some trades. The riots and local dis- 
turbances which had for many years past been taking 
place sporadically in various districts, now became daily 
more frequent, so much so that from March onwards the 
whole peasantry of France may be said to have been in 
a state of open insurrection, three hundred separate ris- 
ings in the provinces being counted for the four months 
preceding the taking of the Bastille. 

In 1787, the Minister Lomenie de Brienne had created 
nineteen new provincial assemblies. Below the arron- 
dissement, or district assembly, which had been instituted 
some years before, now came the assembly of the parish. 
In each of these primary assemblies of the parish, the 
arrondissement, and even of the province, the " people, 
farmers, etc., sat side by side with the local dignitaries," 
a fact which, as may be imagined, considerably tended to 
obliterate the ancient feudal awe. In November, 1787, 
the King announced his intention of convoking the States- 
General. On the 5th of July, 1788, the various local 
bodies were called upon to draw up cahiers, or state- 
ments of their grievances, for presentment before the 
King and States-General, in which a double representa- 
tion of the " third estate " was conceded. These cahiers 
form a mass of the most interesting material illustrative 
of the condition of France just before the Revolution, 
and have not even yet been fully investigated. " The 
King," said the proclamation, " desires that from the ex- 
tremities of his kingdom, and the least known of its habi- 
tations, each may feel assurance in bringing before him 
his views and grievances," and this and other similar ex- 
pressions were interpreted by the peasantry in the natural 
sense that the King was really desirous of rescuing them 



8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

from starvation. It accordingly emboldened them to take 
the matter into their own hands. In January the cahiers 
were drawn up, which meant that the people had now 
for the first time formulated their ills. Discussion in the 
assemblies had excited them. The States - General was 
going to look to their wrongs, it was true, but the States- 
General did not meet till May, and meanwhile they were 
starving. One thing was clear, they must have bread. 
Accordingly, in defiance of local authorities and guar- 
dians of the peace, bands ranging up to three or four hun- 
dred and more formed themselves all over France, seized 
and plundered granaries, religious houses, stores of all 
kinds, entered public buildings in the name of the people, 
destroying all legal documents (justly regarded as the 
instruments of their servitude) which they could lay their 
hands on, proclaimed the local dues and taxes abolished, 
summarily put to death all those who interfered with 
them in the name of law and order, and, emboldened by 
success, finally took to the burning of the chateaux and 
the indiscriminate destruction and appropriation of the 
houses and property of the wealthy. That the numbers 
of these bands were augmented not only by the work- 
men out of employment in Paris, Rouen, etc., but also 
by professional thieves, was only to be expected. The 
local authorities were hopelessly inadequate to cope with 
the insurgents, and central authority in Paris seemed 
paralyzed. 

Ordinarily readers of the history of the Revolution are 
apt to forget, in following the course of events in the 
metropolis, that they were only an enlarged picture of 
what was going on in hundreds of towns and villages 
throughout the provinces. Both before and after the 
famous 14th of July, in most of the provinces of France 
all constituted authority was at an end. No one durst 
disobey the mandates of the popular insurgents. It would 
be impossible, and tedious if it were possible, to enumerate 
all the circumstances of even the principal revolts. The 



ECONOMIC PRELUDE IN THE PROVINCES 9 

manner was pretty much the same in all, and the follow- 
ing account of an insurrection at Strasburg may serve 
to illustrate it: Five or six hundred peasants, artisans, 
unemployed, tramps, and others, seize the occasion of 
a public holiday to attack the Hotel de Ville, the as- 
sembled magistrates escaping precipitately by back doors. 
The windows disappear under a volley of stones, the 
doors are broken in with crowbars, and the crowd enters 
like a torrent. " Immediately," the account states, " there 
was a rain of shutters, window-sashes, chairs, tables, 
sofas, books, papers, etc." The public archives are thrown 
to the winds, the neighboring streets being covered with 
them. Deeds, charters, etc., perish in the flames. In the 
cellars, tuns containing valuable wines are forced, the 
marauders, after drinking their fill, allowing them to run 
until there is a pond formed five feet deep, in which sev- 
eral people are drowned. Others loaded with booty, run 
off with it under the eyes of the soldiers, who rather en- 
courage the proceedings than otherwise. For three whole 
days the city is given over to the mob. All the houses be- 
longing to persons of local distinction are sacked from 
cellar to attic. The revolt spreads instantly throughout 
the neighboring country.^ 

A few weeks before the opening of the States-General 
a great riot occurred in Paris, in the Faubourg St. An- 
toine, the workmen's quarter, attended by much bloodshed 
and loss of life. Paris, we are told, had for months past 
begun to fill v/ith desperate, hungry, and ragged stran- 
gers, drawn thither by poverty from the uttermost ends of 
France. 

In some districts the leaders pretend to be acting under 
the orders of the King. The result is everywhere at least 
one thing — the enforcement of a maximum in the price 
of bread, and the abolition of taxes. Atrocities, of course, 
occur here and there. A lawyer is half-roasted to make 
him surrender a charter supposed to be in his possession ; 

* Taine, Origines, tome i, pp. 81-82. 



lo THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

a lord is tortured to death ; an ecclesiastic torn in pieces. 
Thus have threatened ruin and starvation, to which the 
financial extravagances of the Court have been the occa- 
sion of giving articulate expression, and the remedy for 
which is offered, to those who can read, in the Social Con- 
tract of Rousseau, become the immediate cause of the 
French Revolution. The same imminent bankruptcy of 
the kingdom, occasioned by the extravagance of the 
Court, which led to the convocation of the States-General, 
led also indirectly to the founding of that main-spring of 
the Revolution, the Jacobins' Club. The dispute between 
the Court and the local legal Councils, called ** Parlia- 
ments/' led to the crippling of their powers by the King, 
and this again, to remonstrant deputations from the ag- 
grieved provincial towns. One set of these remonstrants, 
hailing from Rennes, in Brittany, formed themselves into 
a club called the Breton Club, for the ventilation of their 
grievances, using the old Convent of St. Jacques in the 
Rue St. Honore for their meetings. The original scope 
of the society soon became enlarged, and the name 
changed from that of Breton Club to Jacobins' Club, after 
their meeting-place. Such was the origin of the vast 
club-organization, which exercised such a stupendous in- 
fluence not only in Paris, but in France, during the fol- 
lowing years. 



CHAPTER III 

THE OPENING IN PARIS 

On the 5th of May, 1789, the royal town of Versailles 
was gay — gay with decorations, with music, vocal and 
instrumental, with epaulettes, " etiquettes,'* fair women, 
and fair costumes. It was the opening of the States- 
General, called together for the first time since 16 14, as 
a last resource to rescue the realm from dissolution and 
impending bankruptcy — and also the definitive opening 
of the French Revolution. 

At midday might have been seen the feudal procession 
entering the Church of St. Louis. After the King and 
Royal Family, the clergy occupied the first place, " the 
superior clergy," attired in purple robe and lawn sleeves ; 
the less " superior," in cassock, cloak, and square bonnet. 
Next came the nobles, habited in black, with silver-faced 
vest, lace cravat, and plumed hat ; while bringing up the 
rear followed the humble tiers-etat — the representatives 
of the middle-class, the merchants, the farmers, and the 
small landowners — dressed also in black, but adorned 
with merely a short cloak and plain hat. With this mem- 
orable procession, the constitution of the Middle Ages, 
moribund for over two centuries, spasmodically gasped 
its last breath. 

The business of the States-General did not pass off as 
gaily as the opening ceremony. Conflict between the or- 
ders followed immediately, on points of procedure, with 
the result that the third estate constituted itself the 
National Assembly of France, refusing to admit the other 
orders to its deliberations except on a basis of equality. 
The King manifested his displeasure by closing the door 



12 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of the hall of the States against them. The Assembly 
answered by the celebrated oath it took outside in the 
Tennis Court of Versailles, 20th June, by which it pledged 
itself not to separate until it had given France a Con- 
stitution. The Assembly triumphed over the Court two 
days after its oath, inasmuch as it regained possession of 
its hall, openly defied the King in person, abolished the 
independence of the clergy and noblesse, formally con- 
firmed its decrees of the previous day which the King 
had quashed, and proceeded with its deliberations. Thus 
the curtain rose on the first act of the revolutionary 
drama. 

Meanwhile the new popular ferment occasioned by the 
events at Versailles had taken complete possession of 
the capital, and was rapidly spreading into the provinces. 
Some weeks later, early in July, Necker, the Minister of 
Finance, beloved by the middle-class, was dismissed from 
office. Necker, it should be observed, was one of the 
less bad of the scoundrels, called finance ministers, who 
have been malversating the national funds in succession 
for years past. By comparison he appeared almost vir- 
tuous, and the populace, whose charity and admiration 
are always boundless toward official personages, when 
not quite so bad as one would expect, had converted him 
into an object of adoration. A procession for the purpose 
of protesting against the minister's dismissal was dis- 
persed by force of arms and two persons killed. The city 
was soon in an uproar. The Palais-Royal, the great place 
of public assembly and political discussion, was packed 
with over ten thousand persons. On the table, which 
served for a tribune, stood a young man, of fine features 
and gentle mien, who was haranguing the crowd. It was 
Camille Desmoulins, the popular journalist. " Citizens," 
said he, " there is not a moment to lose ! The removal 
of Necker is the tocsin for a St. Bartholomew of patriots ! 
This evening, all the Swiss and German battalions are 
coming from the Champ de Mars to slaughter us ! There 



THE OPENING IN PARIS 13 

remains but one resource ; let us rush to arms ! " So say- 
ing, he placed in his hat a sprig of a tree — green being 
the emblem of hope. The example was followed till the 
chestnut trees of Paris were denuded. At the same time 
the tricolor flag was first adopted as the banner of the 
popular party. 

The crowd proceeded through the streets, bearing in 
triumph the busts of Necker and Philippe Egalite, the 
King's cousin, but not his friend, its numerical strength 
increasing with every yard traversed, till its course was 
arrested on the Pont-Royal by a detachment of the Royal 
German Cavalry. The latter were driven back by showers 
of stones, and the concourse swept onwards as far as the 
Place Louis XV. Here a formidable street fight took 
place, the people being opposed by a squadron of dragoons. 
The regulars of the King, after encountering a vigorous 
resistance, at length routed the insurgent Parisians, but 
the victory was more fatal to the cause they represented 
than any defeat could have been. The dispersed multi- 
tude carried the indignant cry, " To arms ! " from end to 
end of Paris. The regiment of French guards quartered 
in Paris mutinied, and put to flight the mercenary foreign 
troops intended to overawe them. 

The whole night long the tocsin rang out from the 
Hotel de Ville, where a committee of prominent citizens 
was sitting to organize a search for arms. The morning 
of the I2th of July saw Paris in full revolt ; the tocsins of 
all the churches were pealing ; drums were beating along 
all the main streets; excited crowds collecting in every 
opening space ; an influx of the " disinherited " class 
trooped in at all the gates of Paris ; gunsmiths' shops were 
ransacked; on all sides a mad search for weapons was 
the order of the day. The Committee at the Hotel de 
Ville, in response to the importunate demands for arms, 
could only reply that they had none. The civic authori- 
ties, next appealed to, temporized and evasively promised 
assistance. Houses were sacked; carriages seized. In 



14 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the confusion there were naturally not wanting ruffians 
who sought to make use of the state of things prevailing 
for purposes of mere plunder. Such excesses were per- 
emptorily put down with the cry, *' Death to the thieves ! " 
The equipages and other property of the " aristocrats " 
when seized by the people were always either destroyed 
or carried to a central station at the Place de Greve. In 
the afternoon " the provost of the merchants " (a digni- 
tary of the effete medieval hierarchy corresponding to the 
modern maire) announced the speedy arrival of the mus- 
kets and ammunition so eagerly clamored for on all sides. 
A citizen militia was formed under the name of the Par- 
isian Guard, numbering 48,000 men; cockades of red, 
.blue, and green were everywhere distributed ; but the 
hours passed on and no muskets arrived. A panic seized 
the city that the mercenary troops were about to march 
on Paris during the ensuing night. At last chests pur- 
porting to contain ammunition did appear, were eagerly 
torn open, and found to contain — old linen and broken 
pieces of wood. 

The Committee men and the " provost of the mer- 
chants " alike narrowly escaped with their lives. But 
the provost, pleading that he had been himself deceived, 
tried to divert the attention of the people by sending 
them on a futile expedition to Chartreux. The Com- 
mittee finally hit upon the device of arming the citizens 
with pikes, in default of firearms, and accordingly ordered 
50,000 to be forged. As a measure of protection against 
thieves and plunderers, the city was illuminated through- 
out the night. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE BASTILLE 

Next morning (the 14th) early, the word was passed 
among the populace, " To the Invalides ! " the military 
hospital. There at least arms must be forthcoming. And 
sure enough the people were rewarded for their courage 
in braving the troops assembled in the Champ de Mars, 
and forcing their way into the great military depot. 

Twenty-eight thousand muskets, besides cannon, 
sabres, and spears were carried off in triumph. Mean- 
while the alarm had been given that the royal regiments, 
posted at St. Denis, were on the way to the capital, and, 
above all, that the cannon of the Bastille itself was pointed 
toward the boulevard St. Antoine. 

The attention of Paris was at once directed to the for- 
mer point, which really commanded the most populous 
districts of the city. The whole morning there was but 
one cry, "To the Bastille! " The Bastille was the great 
emblem of the King's authority. In the middle ages it 
had been the Royal stronghold against the turbulent 
feudal barons. But though the French nobility had long 
ceased to be " turbulent barons " and had become ob- 
sequious courtiers, the Bastille remained, nevertheless, the 
great visible embodiment of the, at present, long cen- 
tralized authority of the King of France. The capture of 
the Bastille would therefore be the greatest blow the 
King's prestige could possibly suffer. Add to this, that 
although no longer employed for its original purpose, the 
Bastille had become specially obnoxious, owing to its 
use as a place for arbitrary imprisonment under the in- 
famous lettres de cachet. Armed crowds assembled then 



i6 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

at this place from all quarters, till the great fortress 
seemed confronted by the whole city in arms. Negotia- 
tions took place with the governor, Delaunay, but the 
people persistently shouted, *' We want the Bastille ! " 
The die was cast by the destruction of the great bridge, 
which was battered down by blows from hatchets, it is 
said, by two men only. The concourse poured in; the 
second drawbridge was attacked and vigorously defended 
by the small garrison. 

Numbers of the assailants fell, killed and wounded. 
The siege continued over four hours, when the French 
Guard, who, as we have seen, had already sided with the 
Revolution, arrived with cannon. The garrison, seeing 
the case hopeless, themselves urged the governor to sur- 
render. But old Delaunay preferred blowing the place 
up and burying himself amidst the ruins. His compan- 
ions alone prevented him from carrying out this design. 
The soldiers thereupon surrendered on condition that 
their lives should be spared. The leaders of the people 
who were in the forefront, and had given their word to 
this effect, did their utmost to protect the garrison from 
the indignation of the crowd. But among the thousands 
that thronged in there were probably few who knew 
anything of what had taken place. As a consequence, 
Delaunay and some of the Swiss garrison fell victims to 
the popular fury. 

Meanwhile the Hotel de Ville was in trepidation. 
Above all, the " provost of the merchants," Flesselles, 
trembled lest he should be made to suffer for his treach- 
ery. These fears were not allayed when shouts of 
*' Victory ! " " Liberty ! " issuing from thousands of 
throats, assailed the ears of the inmates, and grew louder 
minute by minute. It was the conquerors of the Bastille 
carrying their heroes in triumph to the municipal head- 
quarters. 

Presently there entered the great hall, an enthusiastic 
but disorderly, ragged, and bloodstained crowd, pro- 




VICTOR RIQUETI MIRABEAU 



^,^ 



THE BASTILLE i7 

miscuously armed with pikes, muskets, hatchets, and well- 
nigh every other conceivable weapon. Above the heads 
of the crowd one held the keys of the Bastille, another 
the " regulations " of the prison, a third the collar of the 
governor. 

A general amnesty for all the defenders captured was 
agreed to after much opposition. But the " provost of 
the merchants " did not get off so easily. On the corpse 
of Delaunay a letter had been found, in which Flesselles 
had stated that he was am.using the Parisians with cock- 
ades and promises, and that if the fortress could only hold 
out till nightfall relief should come. A Court was to 
have been improvised in the Palais Royal to judge him, 
but on the way thither he was laid dead by a pistol shot 
from one of the crowd. 

The excitement of the day's action over, precautions 
to avert designs against the capital on the part of the 
Court were redoubled. Everywhere barricades were 
raised, paving stones torn up, pikes forged. The whole 
population was all night long at work in the streets. 
How well-grounded were the fears of the Parisians would 
have been evident to anyone behind the scenes at Ver- 
sailles, where Breteuil, the Prime Minister, had just prom- 
ised the King to restore the royal authority in three days, 
this very night having been fixed for the expedition, and 
wine and presents distributed among the royal troops in 
anticipation. 

The Assembly, which was sitting en permanence, was 
about to send one more deputation to the King (it had 
already sent two) when he appeared in person in its 
midst. On being informed during the night of the events 
that had taken place, by the " Grand Master of the Ward- 
robe," he exclaimed " It is a revolt." " No, sire," replied 
the Grand Master, " it is a revolution." On the King's 
subsequent protestations of affection for his subjects, 
and his statement that he had just given orders for the 
withdrawal of the foreign troops from Paris and Ver- 



i8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

sailles, that he confided his person to the representatives 
of the nation alone, etc., the Assembly gave way to trans- 
ports of joy, rose en masse, and escorted him to the palace. 

The news spread rapidly. A revulsion of feeling took 
place all round, from terror to elation, from hatred to 
gratitude. The general jubilation was increased by the 
restoration of Necker, the entry of Louis XVL into Paris, 
and his acceptance of the tricolor cockade. Thus ended 
the preparatory period of the Revolution. It is needless 
to say the moral effect of the popular victory throughout 
France was immense, every town becoming henceforth a 
revolutionary center in the sense of possessing a definite 
revolutionary organization. 

There are one or two useful hints to be learned from 
this old and oft-repeated story of the fall of the Bastille. 
The first is of the eminent utility of popular " force " if 
only applied at the right moment. Beforehand, it would 
have seemed preposterous that " an undisciplined mob " 
could take a fortress and paralyze the efforts of a reac- 
tion possessed of a trained army. Yet so it was. 

Another point to note is the untrustworthiness of men 
who belong to the class which makes the revolution, and 
who even profess to represent it, when their personal in- 
terest and position are bound up with the maintenance of 
the existing order. Flesselles, a man of the third estate, 
its leading dignitary in the city of Paris, was yet the man 
who was the least anxious to see the feudal hierarchy 
overthrown. And why? Because he played a part in it. 
The " third estate " had been incorporated into the me- 
dieval system. He was its representative as one of the 
feudal orders. Its position was subordinate indeed, but, 
now that it was growing in importance, its leading men 
had much more to gain by clinging to the skirts of the 
noblesse, and aiding them in frustrating that complete 
revolution which the rank and file of the class were seek- 
ing, than in assisting the accomplishment of this revolu- 
tion, which could only mean the effacement of their own 



THE BASTILLE 19 

personal position. History repeats itself. Trade-unions 
have won for themselves recognition and patronage in the 
middle-class world to-day. Their leaders, in a similar 
way, do not exhibit any special desire for a change which, 
though it would mean the liberation and triumph of the 
class they represent, would, at the same time, render 
trade-unions a thing of the past, no less than the lord 
mayors and cabinet ministers who stroke the backs of the 
parliamentary elect of trades unions. No, verily, this is 
not a nice prospect for the trade-union leaders I 



CHAPTER V 

THE CONSTITUTION MONGERS 

The Constitution was now in full train. The Revolu- 
tion up to the latter point was officially recognized. 

There was no harking back for any one. Foulon and 
Berthier, two *' administrators of the first rank/' under 
the old regime, had been publicly hanged, a la lanterne, 
and quartered by the people. The first stratum of revo- 
lutionists was to the fore. Mirabeau, Lafayette, and 
Bailly are the central figures of the Constituent Assem- 
bly. Duport, Barnave, and Lameth its extreme men. The 
Comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791), one of the pre-revolu- 
tionary writers, was the leader of the Moderate party in 
the Assembly. His stupendous powers of oratory made 
him a useful ally and a dangerous foe. This the Court 
was not slow in discovering, and accordingly Mirabeau 
was soon won over by bribes to do his best to frustrate 
every popular measure in the Assembly, while all the time 
professing devotion to the cause of liberty and the people. 
When this failed, the popular ( ?) orator did not disdain 
to resort to actual plotting. 

The Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), of American 
Independence notoriety, another member of the noblesse, 
who had adopted previously to the Revolution the quasi- 
advanced views then fashionable with his class, was the 
military representative of the Moderate party in his ca- 
pacity of commandant of the National Guard, besides the 
henchman of Mirabeau in the Assembly. Bailly (1736- 
I793)» who was elected Mayor of Paris the day after 
the taking of the Bastille, also coadjutated in the work 
of moderating the Revolution alike in his official capacity 

20 



THE CONSTITUTION MONGERS 21 

and in the Assembly. As to the extreme men, they really 
represented but the most moderate form of constitutional 
monarchy. The situation of parties may be estimated by 
the fact that Barnave advocated a suspensory veto on the 
part of the King, while Mirabeau strenuously supported 
the absolute veto. xA.nd be it remembered at such a time, 
the right of vetoing obnoxious measures would have been 
no mere matter of form. It appears, then, that even the most 
advanced parliamentarians of the day were not prepared 
to go beyond the present Prussian Constitution. Never- 
theless, circumstances early forced upon this timid and 
comparatively reactionary Assembly some drastic political 
measures, first and foremost on the memorable night of 
the 4th of August, the abolition of all seignorial rights and 
privileges. At a later stage, after the assembly had re- 
moved to Paris, a little judicious coercion from the trib- 
unes, or people's galleries, which were tenanted by ad- 
vanced revolutionists, there is no doubt, exercised a salu- 
tary influence on several occasions. The members knew 
v/ell enough that their lives were in the hands of the Paris 
populace, and those of their wives and children, besides 
their property, at the mercy of the populace of the rural 
districts. 

The Assembly's first important performance after the 
fall of the Bastille was the declaration of the Rights of 
Man, in imitation of the Americans after the successful 
termination of the War of Independence. The declaration 
of the Rights of Man contains a series of articles, laying 
down the principles of political equality. Most of them 
are unexceptionable and even trite, but it is significant that 
number 17 affirms, categorically, the absolute sacredness 
of private property. The question which arose immedi- 
ately subsequent to this, on the constitution of the Cham- 
ber and its relations to the King, need not detain us. It is 
sufficient to state that while the assembly was amusing 
itself discussing '* suspensory veto," or " absolute veto," 
the Court, viz., Queen and Company at Versailles, were 



22 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

meditating the transference of the King to Metz, where the 
mercenary German troops were stationed, and whence 
communication with the French noblesse who had emi- 
grated, and the reactionary foreign powers, was easy, the 
idea being to declare Paris and the Assembly rebels, and 
march upon the city with the view of restoring the abso- 
lute monarchy. These machinations at Versailles are in- 
teresting as having given the direction to the first great 
demonstration of the proletariat of Paris during the Rev- 
olution. I say the direction, as the proximate cause was 
the advice the now rising popular journalist, Marat, had 
given some days before in his Ami du Peuple, when dis- 
cussing the scarcity of bread. 

The revolt broke out in this way. A woman beating a 
drum patrolled the streets, crying, " Bread ! Bread ! " She 
was soon surrounded by large numbers of women, who 
repaired to the Hotel de Ville demanding bread and arms, 
at the same time raising the cry, " To Versailles ! " which 
was taken up by the populace generally, with the sudden- 
ness characteristic of Parisian outbreaks. The National 
Guard and the French Guard eventually joined in, with 
such persistence and unanimity, that Lafayette, after some 
hours of expostulation, was compelled to place himself at 
their head, the troops having begun to march without him. 

The unexpected appearance of a concourse headed by 
women and backed by a large armed force, naturally threw 
the Queen and Court into a state of " amazement and ad- 
miration " (in the Shakesperian sense). The household 
troops at once surrounded the palace. The women, how- 
ever, expressed peaceable intentions, and through their 
spokeswoman laid their grievances before the King and 
the Assembly, describing the direness of the famine pre- 
vailing. Meanwhile, in the courtyard of the palace, which 
was filled with a motley crowd, a quarrel arose, an officer 
of the King's troops having struck a National Guard. 
This was the signal for an immediate conflict between the 
two armed bodies. The people and the Nationals were 



THE CONSTITUTION MONGERS 23 

furious, and the collision must have resulted in more 
bloodshed than it did, had it not been for the darkness of 
the night, and the prudent order given the Royal soldiers 
to cease from firing and to retreat. 

The disturbance was eventually quelled, the crowds 
melting away gradually as the night advanced. The royal 
family retired to rest at two o'clock ; Lafayette, who had 
remained up all night, in vain endeavored to snatch repose 
for an hour after five a. m. Before six, some members of 
the previous evening's crowd who had remained at Ver- 
sailles, insulted one of the bod3^-guard, vvho drew upon 
them, wounding one of their num.ber. The sleepless " hero 
of two worlds " (so called from his American adventures) 
was soon upon the scene ; he found considerable remnants 
of yesterday's gathering furiously forcing their way into 
the palace. The assailants were temporarily dispersed, but 
soon reassembled, clamoring for the King. The King 
eventually appeared upon the balcony, promising in reply 
to the popular demands that he would go to Paris with his 
family. 

The Queen, the head and front of all the recent offend- 
ing, next stepped on the balcony in the company of the 
arch-courtier, Lafayette, who with a profound obeisance 
kissed the hand of the woman who had been plotting the 
massacre of that very people for whom this h3^pocritical 
charlatan had been all along professing zeal and devotion. 
But the humiliation of the Parisians was not yet ended. 
Lafayette retiring, reappeared with one of the obnoxious 
body-guard, and placing the tricolor cockade upon his 
breast embraced him. At each of these points the as- 
sembled crowd duly cheered. The royal family then set 
out for Paris, and the Tuileries became henceforth their 
permanent residence. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NEW CONSTITUTION 

After the events we have just described, which occurred 
on the 5th and 6th of October, 1789, the course of the Rev- 
olution was, for some considerable time, peaceful and par- 
liamentary. The Assembly, till then at Versailles, soon 
followed the Court to Paris. Its migration seemed the sig- 
nal for a vigorous application of the pickax to the old 
feudal system b}^ this hitherto " moderate " body. The 
chief bulwark attacked v/as the property and independent 
organization of the Church. Prior to this, however, the 
Assembly had reconstituted the map of France, by abolish- 
ing the old division into provinces, substituting for it the 
present one into departments. The provinces had in the 
middle ages formed de facto independent states. The di- 
vision into departments placed the whole realm under one 
central administration, and included the entire reorganiza- 
tion of the judicial system. There were eighty-three de- 
partments formed, which were divided into districts, and 
these into cantons. The department had its administrative 
council and executive directory, as had also the district; 
the canton was merely an electoral sub-division. The 
commune, or township, was confided to a general coun- 
cil and a municipality, which were subordinated to the de- 
partmental council. All elections were indirect, and the 
whole scheme in this respect seemed carefully arranged 
to exclude, as far as possible, the working classes and 
peasantry from any effective voice in legislation. 

The nationalization of the Church lands and property 
generally was precipitated by the old trouble, the exhausted 
state of the treasury. Necker had devised every conceiv- 

24 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 25 

able plan for raising the wind and failed, when the last- 
named project was suggested as a means of at least tempo- 
rarily satisfying the exigencies of the situation. It would 
be tiresome, in a sketch like the present, to describe in de- 
tail the stages by which the Assembly arrived at the final 
result. The issue of its deliberations, to wit, the decree ex- 
propriating the Church, was carried on the 26. of Decem- 
ber, and thenceforth the churchmen as a body became the 
determined enemies of the new regime. At first the clergy 
seemed more inclined than the noblesse to compromise 
matters, in the hope of retaining their wealth, but now 
that the die was cast they were implacable. The difficul- 
ties attending the sale of the ecclesiastical property, how- 
ever, were too great to admit of its realization in time 
for the pressing needs of the exchequer, hence the issue 
of assignafs, or notes having a forced currency, based 
on the value of the expropriated lands. This, which 
meant the adoption of a system of paper money on a 
vast scale, staved off the imminent financial ruin. 

All these measures were very interesting, and showed 
a laudable activity on the part of the body politic; but 
they did not affect the crowds to be seen daily at the 
bakers' shops, ever and anon breaking out into tumult. 
The working classes of Paris had gone to Versailles de- 
manding simply bread, and Lafayette had given them — 
the royal family ! Any further grumbling was obviously 
to be suppressed with drastic measures. Accordingly 
martial law was proclaimed, and the municipality em- 
powered to forcibly disperse any assembly of people hav- 
ing once summoned them to retire. Lafayette was there 
to put this regulation into effect at the first opporunity. 
But it did not come yet. 

The clubs were now beginning to play a leading part 
in influencing public opinion. The principal were those 
of the Jacobins and the Cordeliers. A third club was in- 
stituted subsequently by Lafayette, called the Feuillants, 
and representing " constitutional " principles. The 



26 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Jacobins' club, destined hereafter to become the great 
unofficial expression of the Revolution, counted but few 
prominent adherents in the Assembly, though Barnave 
and the Lameths were among its members, and it was 
occasionally patronized by several of the Constitution- 
makers, including Mirabeau himself. One cadaverous 
figure, also a deputy, was always at the Jacobins', his 
dress and speeches alike carefully prepared — by name 
Maximilian Robespierre, by profession advocate, a native 
of Arras. 

The club of the Cordeliers was composed of an ad- 
vanced section of the Jacobins. Among its constant at- 
tendants might have been seen the stalwart yeoman Dan- 
ton, and the short, thick-set, sharp-featured journalist 
Marat. But neither the clubs nor their rising orators at 
this time exercised more than an indirect influence on the 
course of events, though they energetically debated every 
question as it arose. 

Meanwhile, in spite of occasional disturbances, and 
panics as to the King plotting his flight, affairs moved 
along with comparative smoothness towards the comple- 
tion of the constitution, the consummation of the middle- 
class political order. 

Preparations for celebrating the anniversary of the 
fall of the Bastille with due solemnity went on apace. A 
national confederation was to be held in the Champ de 
Mars on this occasion in honor of the constitution. The 
" advanced " members of the noblesse, not to be behind 
in " patriotism," proposed in view of the national fete 
the abolition of titles, armorial bearings, and the feudal 
insignia generally. The proposition was enthusiastically 
carried by the Assembly. Its result was naturally to 
rouse the keenest indignation among the nobles outside 
and to give further edge to the organized movement of 
aristocratic emigration. 

On the 14th of July, 1790, the population of Paris, not- 
withstanding bad weather, were to be seen streaming 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 27 

from all sides in holiday attire, amid a blaze of tricolor — 
banners, hangings, cockades — to the Champ de Mars, 
where a gigantic altar had been erected in the center of 
a vast artificial amphitheater. The Royal Family, the 
Assembly and the municipality were grouped around this 
altar, before which the then popular Bishop of Autun, 
Talleyrand (subsequently the famous diplomatist and 
wit) performed mass in high pontifical robes, assisted by 
four hundred clergy in white surplices. Lafayette first as- 
cended the altar, and in the name of the National Guards 
of the whole realm took the civic oath of fidelity to " the 
nation, the law, and the King." This was followed by 
salvos of artillery and prolonged shouts of " Vive la 
nation ! " " Vive le roi ! " The president of the Assembly, 
and all the deputies, the department councils, etc., next 
took the same oath. But the grand item of the day's pro- 
gramme was reached when Louis XVI. himself rose to 
swear, as King of France, to maintain the constitution de- 
creed by the Assembly. This part of the performance 
terminated, as usual on great occasions, with the appear- 
ance of the Queen holding the Dauphin up aloft to the 
homage and admiration of the assembled multitude, who 
responded in one long and continuous acclamation. 
Chants of thanksgiving and exultant jubilation generally 
closed the day's proceedings. 

Such was the inauguration of the first French Con- 
stitution! But despite the new and glorious liberty 
crowds of hungry Parisians continued to be daily turned 
away from the bakers' shops. 



CHAPTER VII 

A " CONSTITUTION " OX ITS BEAM ENDS 

All state functionaries, military, civic and ecclesiasti- 
cal, were now compelled to take the oath of allegiance to 
the new order of things. This led to a revolt on the part 
of the majority of the nobles and ecclesiastics, whose in- 
dignation was already roused to boiling point by the loss 
respectively of their privileges and revenues. Numbers 
of aristocratic officers left the army and the country to 
join their brethren across the frontier. Others, such as 
Bouille, gave in with the view of gaining over the army 
for the counter- Revolution. The regular army at this 
time was almost entirely officered by aristocrats, a fact 
which gave rise to numerous revolts. A mutiny of three 
regiments, at Nancy, was only quelled after much blood- 
shed by Bouille. 

Most of the clergy refused either to take the oath of 
allegiance or to leave their benefices except by force, 
being backed up in this by the enormous majority of the 
bishops with the Pope at their head. The new constitu- 
tion, in subordinating the ecclesiastical to the civil power, 
was declared to involve an encroachment on ecclesias- 
tical privilege, the Pope refusing to consecrate bishops 
in place of those deposed for non-compliance, and pro- 
claiming the creation of all ecclesiastics nominated ac- 
cording to civil forms to be null and void. The ejection 
of non-conforming priests continued, notwithstanding, 
their successors being instituted by the bishops of Autun 
and Lida, who had unreservedly accepted the constitution. 
The opposite party retaliated by excommunicating all 
who acknowledged the " intruders," as they termed them. 

28 



A "CONSTITUTION" ON ITS BEAM ENDS 29 

Thus began civil war between the Revolution and the 
Church. The clergy themselves prepared the soil of the 
popular mind for the reception and germination of the 
teachings of the pre-revolutionary writers, which, until 
now, had been chiefly confined to the leisured and culti- 
vated classes, by forcing it to the logical dilemma of 
friendship with the " Revolution " and enmity with Chris- 
tianity, or friendship with Christianity and enmity with 
the " Revolution." 

As regards the " emigrant " aristocrats, their object 
was to foment the hatred of the foreign Powers against 
the Revolution and to cement a coalition to effect its 
forcible overthrow by the invasion of the country. For 
well-nigh three years these intrigues with the " for- 
eigners " were going on with the connivance of the Court, 
until the fall of the monarchy precipitated " war to the 
knife *' with the powers in the shape of the campaign 
known as the " Revolutionary War." To understand the 
position of affairs it is necessary to remember that since 
the collapse of feudalism as a living political order, with 
its quarrels between the titular King and his more or 
less nominally vassal barons, power had been concen- 
trated more and more in royal hands, while nationalities 
had become definitely fixed. The result was that the 
mainly internal politics of the feudal period had from 
the sixteenth century onwards been giving place to exter- 
nal politics, in which the sovereigns of Europe, having 
ceased to fear the rivalry of nobles within their jurisdic- 
tion, discovered causes of quarrel with their brother 
sovereigns without — usually in the hope of gaining ter- 
ritory. The French Revolution marks the opening, for 
the Continent, at least, of the modern period of the strug- 
gle of sovereigns, not with their nobles or with each other, 
but with peoples, that is, with the middle-class backed by 
the proletariat. This struggle began in England more 
than a hundred years earlier than on the Continent, but 
practically subsided again with the Revolution of 1689. 



so THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The three principal European Powers were at this 
time England, France and Austria. Prussia was a still 
rising monarchy, and the great Muscovite empire loomed 
in the background. The petty German princelets might 
be reckoned upon to side with one or other of the greater 
powers according to circumstances. 

The death of Mirabeau, in April, 1791, having removed 
all hope of making a successful stroke on behalf of Royal- 
ism in the Assembly, the Court turned its attention to 
military plotting with increased energy. On the other 
hand, the King felt some misgivings at being reestab- 
lished exclusively by the aid of foreign bayonets, more 
especially as his cousin, the Comte d'Artois, was the 
leader in the movement, and if it were successful might 
possibly obtain more than his due share of influence in 
the resuscitated realm. These considerations led the 
Court to turn a favorable ear to General Bouille, whose 
plan was to conquer the Revolution by means of the 
troops already at hand in the service of the King. The 
army was to be moved to the frontier, the royal family 
were then to escape into its midst, after which war was 
to be declared against the Assembly, and the troops to 
march on the capital. This arrangement was effected up 
to the point of the King's flight on the 21st of June, 1791, 
almost without a hitch. Bouille, with his army, was 
ready and waiting for the royal party, when poor Louis 
was accidentally recognized at Varennes, and brought 
back a prisoner to Paris. The indignation of the populace 
knew no bounds. The royal cortege reentered Paris in 
the midst of sullen and angry crowds. For the first time 
serious talk of a Republic was heard. Barnave and the 
Lameths became the leaders of the Constitutional party 
in the Assembly, now that Mirabeau was dead. But it 
was with difficulty that the Constitutionalists could rein- 
state the King after his voluntary and treacherous abdica- 
tion. They were only successful in their efforts after 
having thrown as a sop to Cerberus the condition that if 



A "CONSTITUTION" ON ITS BEAM ENDS 31 

he retracted his oath to the Constitution, if he should 
place himself at the head of an army, or permit others to 
do so, he should lose his inviolability and be considered 
and treated as an ordinary citizen. 

But opinion outside of the Assembly was far from 
satisfied. The leaders of the Jacobin Club (^wliich was 
now the center of a federation of similar clubs through- 
out the country), among whom were confounded in one 
cause, Brissot, Petion, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, etc., 
men of the advanced middle class, and men of the people, 
combined to rouse the nation against this decree, insist- 
ing on the abdication of Louis, and denying the compe- 
tency of the Assembly. They drew up a petition in which 
they appealed from the Assembly to the sovereignty of 
the people. This petition was taken to the Champ de 
Mars and laid upon the " altar of the country." Thou- 
sands came to sign it; the assemblage being dispersed 
by Lafayette, returned subsequently in greater numbers 
than before. Next time the commandant of the National 
Guard came, accompanied by Bailly the mayor. The red 
flag, the then symbol of martial law, was unfurled, the 
summons to disperse proclaimed, after which Lafayette 
gave the order to fire. A murderous charge followed, 
in which hundreds were killed and wounded. But not- 
withstanding that the Republicans were cowed for the 
time being, the Court sycophant, and his accomplices in 
the work of the Constitution were well-nigh played out, 
though the old farce had first to be gone through. The 
King once more accepted the Constitution and the terms 
of his reinstatement in possession of his functions in addi- 
tion ; he made a touching and heart-stirring speech to the 
Assembly and was received with effusive demonstrations 
of affection, etc. The Constituent Assembly, which had 
been made up of the abortive States-General, then for- 
mally proclaimed itself dissolved, its members magnani- 
mously renouncing the right of reelection. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 

The new Legislative Assembly, as it was called, to 
distinguish it from the first or Constituent Assembly, 
commenced its sittings on the ist of October, 1791. 
Without, the_coalition of Europe against the Revolution 
was complete. England was united with Prussia and 
Austria, while the petty German States eagerly joined in 
this conspiracy to suppress the French nation. The 
famous treaty of Pilnitz was the expression of the de- 
termination and temper of the Powers, great and small. 

Within, the fabric of Uie constitutional monarchy was 
standing, indeed; but, as Carlyle expresses it, like an in- 
verted pyramid, which may topple over any moment. 
Friction began at once between the King and Assembly 
on questions of reciprocal etiquette, but the speech from 
the throne was well received. 

The dominant party in this Assembly was that of the 
Girondists, or party of compromise, of which more anon, 
the buffer, so to speak, between the Constitutionalists 
proper, now in the minority, and the popular and avow- 
edly Republican party, whose leaders in the clubs, Robes- 
pierre, Danton, Marat, etc., were gaining in influence 
every day. 

Almost the first act of the New Assembly was the 
issue of a decree ordering the emigrants to return on 
penalty of death and confiscation of goods. This order 
the King peremptorily vetoed. The same fate befell an- 
other order of the Assembly, by which refractory priests 
should lose their pay and be placed under surveillance. 
His action in these matters, in view of the imminent in- 

32 




GEORGE JACQUES DANTON 



THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 33 

vasion of the foreign powers and the peasant revolt in 
the Vendee in favor of Royalism (which was led by the 
clergy), were fatal to him, and to the Constitutionalists 
who supported him. 

The Constitutional Ministry fell, and a Girondin Min- 
istry was appointed in its place, with Roland, one of the 
principal Girondin leaders, and the husband of the cele- 
brated Madame Roland, as Minister of the Interior, and 
Dumouriez as Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

The first act of the new Ministry was to take the bull 
by the horns, and to declare war with Austria, a meas- 
ure popular on various sides, for different reasons, and 
approved of by the Court in the hope of the defeat of the 
French forces and the invasion of the country. This 
declaration of war was made on the 20th of April, 1792. 
Three columns proceeded to the frontier, but the pro- 
jected action on the offensive was a fiasco — a panic 
seizing the troops on the approach of the enemy. 

Thenceforward, the French assumed the defensive. 
Such was the beginning of the Revolutionary War. The 
news of the disaster led to bitter recriminations, on the 
part of the popular party, against the Girondins. The 
Girondins, in their turn, threw the blame on the Con- 
stitutionalists, and their commanders, Lafayette, Dillon, 
etc., while the generals themselves threw it on Dumouriez. 
The Jacobins openly accused the Moderate parties of 
treachery and connivance with the Government. Sus- 
picion and distrust were universal. It was now that 
Marat issued his memorable placards, calling for the 
heads of traitors. Meanwhile, to appease the people, the 
Ministry instituted a permanent camp of 20,000 men in 
the neighborhood of Paris, in spite of the vehement oppo- 
sition of the Constitutionalists, and agreed to the intro- 
duction into the new National Guard of promiscuously 
selected companies armed with pikes — the weapons 
which had played such a prominent part at an earlier 
stage of the Revolution. The Assembly, which declared 



34 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

itself sitting in permanence, added to these resolutions 
one ordering the abolition of the King's bodyguard. This 
last decree Louis at once refused to ratify, and on being 
remonstrated with by Roland, dismissed all the Girondin 
ministers, and appointed obscure members of the Con- 
stitutionalist party in their stead. At the same time he 
sent a secret messenger to negotiate with the foreign 
coalition — for his " deliverance." 

The Girondins finding themselves thus left out in the 
cold, joined the Jacobins, who were now the advanced 
guard of the Revolution, and whose organization was 
rapidly becoming a rival to the Assembly, and by this 
means were able to pose as martyrs in the cause of lib- 
erty. The only hope of the party actually in power — 
i. e., the now discredited Constitutionalists — lay in La- 
fayette's army. Lafayette, seeing the situation, played 
out his last card, and published a manifesto, openly defy- 
ing and threatening the Jacobins. The Jacobins' reply to 
this was the insurrection of the 20th of June, 1792, when 
a concourse numbering some 8,000 people left the Fau- 
bourg St. Antoine for the hall of the Assembly. The 
orator who represented the crowd spoke in menacing 
terms, saying that the people were ready to employ all 
their powers in resistance to oppression. He proceeded 
to state that grave complaint was found with the con- 
duct of the war, into which the people demanded an im- 
mediate investigation, but the heaviest grievance of all 
was the dismissal of the patriot Ministers. The Assembly 
replied that the memorial of tl>e people should be taken 
into consideration, and meanwhile, as usual in such cases, 
exhorted them to " respect the law." By this time the 
multitude numbered some 30,000 men, women, and chil- 
dren, including many National Guards, with a liberal 
sprinkling of pikes, flags, and revolutionary emblems 
among them. This motley concourse poured into the 
sacred precincts of the Assembly, singing Qa ira, and 
shouting, " Long live the people ! " " Long live the sans- 



THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 35 

culottes!" On leaving the Assembly the cry was, "To 
the Palace of the Tuileries," where the crowd swept 
through the open gates into the apartments and corridors, 
and were proceeding to demolish the doors with blows, 
when Louis himself appeared, accompanied by only a few 
attendants. The multitude still pressing in, he took his 
station in the recess of a window. There he remained, 
seated on a chair, placed on a table, and protected from 
the pressure of the crowd by a cordon of National 
Guards. To the cries of the people for his sanction to 
the decrees, he replied — as the Royalist historians assure 
us, with intense dignity — " This is neither the manner 
for it to be demanded of me, nor the moment to obtain 
"t." The result of his refusal might have been awkward 
for him had he not had the presence of mind to take ad- 
vantage of an incident which occurred just at the moment. 
A red Phrygian cap, the symbol of the People and of 
Liberty, was presented by one of the crowd on the point 
of a pike. This he took and placed on his head, after 
which he drank off a tankard of wine also offered to 
him, an act which was greeted with tumultuous applause. 
At last Petion, the mayor, arrived with several prominent 
Girondist deputies, and quietly dispersed the gathering. 

Thus the silly Parisian populace were once again 
cajoled out of their demands by a senseless piece of buf- 
foonery. But it was the last time. The Constitutional- 
ists were enraged at the outrage offered to the person 
of the King and to the Law. Lafayette left the army, 
and suddenly appeared at the bar of the Assembly, de- 
manding the impeachment of the instigators of the move- 
ment of the 20th July, an^ the suppression of the popular 
clubs. But the Jacobins had by this time got the upper 
hand, and could defy the champion of middle-class law- 
and-order. Lafayette narrowly escaped arrest for de- 
serting his army, and had ignominiously to slink back. 
The whole force of the populace was with the Girondins 
and the Jacobins. Things were fast hurrying to a crisis. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE TENTH OF AUGUST 

Shortly after the event last described the Assembly 
felt itself compelled, in the face of the open connivance 
of the Court with the enemy, to solemnly declare the 
country in danger. All citizens capable of bearing arms 
v^ere called upon to enroll themselves in the National 
Guard, which was placed on a footing of active service. 

On the 14th of July, the Bastille anniversary, the 
Mayor Petion was the hero of the day — *' Petion or 
death ! " being the popular watchword. All battalions of 
the National Guard showing signs of attachment to Con- 
stitutionalism instantly became objects of popular resent- 
ment. The hatred of the Constitutionalists was daily 
growing. At length the popular party obtained the dis- 
bandment of the companies of Grenadiers and Chas- 
seurs, the main support of the official middle class in 
the National Guard, together with the closing of the 
Feuillants' Club, the rendezvous of the Constitutionalist 
party. 

Events further helped the popular cause. On the 25th 
of July, the Duke of Brunswick p^ublished his manifesto 
in the name of the Emperor and the King of Prussia, 
in which he declared that the allied sovereigns had taken 
up arms to put an end to anarchy in France; threaten- 
ing all the towns which dared to resist with total destruc- 
tion, the members of the Assembly itself with the rigors 
of martial law, etc. The active coalition which was at 
this time confined to Prussia, Austria, the German 
princedoms, and the principality of Turin, had formed 
the plan of marching concentrically upon Paris from 

36 



THE TENTH OF AUGUST 37 

three different points, the Moselle, the Rhine, and the 
Netherlands. 

It was on the day of the movement of the Rhenish 
division from Coblentz, under the command of the Duke 
of Brunswick, that this famous manifesto was issued. 
The following day, July 26th, a contingent of six hun- 
dred Marseillais, sent for by the Girondist Barbaroux, 
who was a native of Marseilles, entered Paris, ostensibly 
on their way to the camp at Soissons, a contingent ren- 
dered immortal by the hymn they sang as they marched 
along; the well-known strains: 

" Allons, enfants de la Patrie, 
Le jour de gloire est arrive," 

having been heard for the first time in the streets of 
Paris on that occasion. The advent of the Marseillais, 
though it did not, as was anticipated, result in an im- 
mediate outbreak, did, nevertheless, stir Paris to its foun- 
dations. The sections, or wards, into which the city was 
divided, became daily more importunate in demanding 
the dethronement of the King. A petition to this effect 
was drawn up by the municipality and the sections, and 
presented to the Assembly by Petion on the 3rd of 
August. The impeachment of Lafayette was next de- 
manded on the 8th, but after a warm discussion was re- 
jected by a considerable majority. This acquittal of 
Lafayette, now regarded by the people as the personifi- 
cation of treachery and reaction, destroyed the last vestige 
of popular confidence in the Assembly. The following 
day one of the sections sent to notify the legislature that 
if the decree of dethronement were not voted before 
nightfall the tocsin (or alarm bell) should be sounded, 
the generate (or rallying drum) beaten, and open insur- 
rection proclaimed, a determination which was trans- 
mitted to the forty-eight sections of the city, and ap- 
proved with only one dissentient. It was not voted, and 



38 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the same evening the Jacobins proceeded in a body to the 
Faubourg St. Antoine, and there organized the attack 
on the Tuileries, which it was decided should take place 
the next day. 

Measures pregnant with import for the future course 
of the Revolution were determined at this meeting; 
among others the dismissal of the Girondist mayor, 
Petion, who had already begun to inspire deep distrust, 
the annulment of the Departmental Assemblies, and re- 
placement of the old municipal council by a Revolutionary 
Commune. 

At midnight the tocsin pealed, the generale beat, the 
sections assembled, and the newly nominated Commune 
took possession of the Hotel de Ville. On the other side 
the " loyal " battalions of the National Guard were 
marched to the palace, which was now filled with hired 
Swiss Guards and Chevaliers de Cour, and the Assembly 
hastily called together. On hearing that Petion was de- 
tained at the Tuileries the moribund legislature at once 
ordered his release and restored him to his functions. 
But he no sooner entered the Hotel de Ville than he was 
placed under a guard of three hundred men by order of 
the new Commune. Poor Petion ! between two fires ! 
The Commune then sent for the commander of the Na- 
tional Guard, Mandat, who was at the Tuileries with the 
royal battalions aforesaid. Mandat, not knowing of the 
creation of the new Commune, incautiously obeyed the 
summons, but turned pale on discovering new faces where 
he had expected to find the old municipal councillors. 
He was accused of having authorized the troops to defend 
the palace against the sovereign people, was ordered to 
the prison of the Abbaye, but was assassinated on the 
steps of the Hotel de Ville as he was being conveyed 
thither. Santerre was then nominated commander-in- 
chief in his stead. 

Meanwhile not a few " Nationals '' at the palace, in 
spite of their loyalty to the " Constitution," winced at 



THE TENTH OF AUGUST 39 

finding themselves in the same galley with aristocrat 
adventurers — avowed enemies of the Revolution in any 
form or shape — and with mercenary foreign soldiers. 
Their leader gone, a division broke out, as Louis found 
when he came to review them, for while the cry, " Vive 
le roi ! " was responded to by some, " Vive la nation ! " 
was responded to by more. But what was most ominous 
was the arrival of two fresh battalions armed with pikes 
as well as guns, who after jeeringly greeting the King 
with shouts of " Vive la nation ! " ** Down with the 
veto ! " " Down with the traitor ! " took up a position at 
the Pont Royal and pointed their cannon straight at the 
palace. It was evident the loyalty of these battalions 
was more than a doubtful quantity. It was now early 
morning, and the insurgents were advancing in columns 
of various strength from different points. The Procura- 
tor-Syndic, Roederer, met them as they were converging 
upon the palace, and suggested their sending a deputa- 
tion to the King. This was peremptorily refused. He 
then addressed himself to the National Guard, reading 
out the articles which enjoined them to suppress revolt. 
But the response was so feeble that the procurator fled 
in all haste back to the Tuileries to urge the royal family 
to leave its quarters and place itself in the midst of the 
Assembly, out of harm's reach. Marie Antoinette re- 
jected the advice in right melo-dramatic style, talked 
very " tall " about being " nailed to the walls of the pal- 
ace," and presented a pistol to Louis with the words, 
" Now, sire, is the moment to show your courage." The 
procurator evidently thought mock heroics ill-timed, and 
sternly remonstrated. Louis himself seemed to share 
this opinion, or at least was not prepared to " show " 
his " courage " just then, and moved to go to the Assem- 
bly. Marie Antoinette followed with the royal youth, 
and thus what bid fair to be a dramatic " situation '" 
came to an ignominious ending. 

Meanwhile the insurgents surrounded the palace, the 



4® THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

defense of which was left to the Swiss Guard, who, 
though they fought with a valor worthy of a better cause, 
were ultimately overwhelmed by numbers and extermi- 
nated. The palace taken, shouts of victory resounded 
from far and near. The Assembly trembled, expecting 
every minute the hall to be forced. In vain it issued a 
proclamation conjuring the people to respect magistrates, 
law and justice. At length the new Commune presented 
itself, claiming the recognition of its powers, the de- 
thronement of the King, and the convocation of a Na- 
tional Convention by universal suffrage. Deputation after 
deputation followed with the same prayer, or rather with 
the same peremptory order. The Assembly, overawed, 
on the motion of the Girondist Vergniaud, passed a reso- 
lution in pursuance of the demands; that is, suspending 
the King, dismissing the Constitutionalist Ministers, and 
ordering the convocation of a National Convention. 

The person of Louis, after remaining three days in 
charge of the Assembly, was handed over to the Com- 
mune, by whose order he was conveyed as a State pris- 
oner to the Temple. Thus ended the loth of August, 
1792. The critical struggle is henceforth not, as hereto- 
fore, between the middle class and the nobles or the King, 
but between the middle class and the proletariat. 



CHAPTER X 

THE FIRST PARIS COMMUNE AND THE SEPTEMBER 
MASSACRES 

With the loth of August and the overthrow of the 
Monarchy, the first part of the French Revolution may 
be considered as complete. The middle-class insurrection 
proper had done its work. The importance of that work 
from certain points of view can hardly be over-rated. In 
a word, it had abolished, not, indeed, feudalism in its true 
sense — for that had long since ceased to exist — but 
the corrupt remains of feudalism and the monarchical 
despotism it left behind it. The beginning of '89 found 
France cut up into provinces, each in many respects an 
independent State, possessing separate customs, separate 
laws, and in some cases a separate jurisdiction. The end 
of '89 even, and still more, '92, found it, for good or evil, 
a united nationality. The power of the clergy and 
noblesse was completely broken. Judicial torture and 
breaking on the wheel were absolutely done away with. 
Madame Roland has described the dying cries of the vic- 
tims of " justice," who, after having been mangled by 
the latter hideous engine, were left exposed on the mar- 
ket-place, " so long as it shall please God to prolong their 
lives." All this, then, was abolished, and in addition the 
" goods " of the clergy and of the " emigrant " nobility 
were declared confiscated. The interesting point as yet 
unsolved was, who should get this precious heritage, the 
" nationalized " lands, houses, and moveable possessions 
of the recalcitrant first and second estates? To avoid 
interrupting the narrative, we shall devote a chapter to 
the elucidation of this point later on. 

41 



42 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

We come now to what we may term the great tidal 
wave of the Revolution. For the time being it swept all 
before it, but it receded as quickly as it came. The period 
of the ascendancy of the proletariat lasted from the lotli 
of August, 1792, to the 27th of July, 1794, thus in all 
nearly two years. The political revolution suddenly be- 
came transformed into a revolution one of whose objects 
at least was greater social and economical, as distin- 
guished from political, equality, and as suddenly ceased 
to be so. The course of the progress and retrogression 
of this movement we shall trace in the following chapters. 

The new revolutionary municipality, or Commune of 
Paris, was now for the time being the most powerful 
executive body in all France. It dictated the action even 
of the Assembly. The establishment of an extraordinary 
tribunal had been proposed. The Assembly hesitated to 
agree to it, whereupon it received a message from the 
Commune that if such a tribunal were not forthwith con- 
stituted, an insurrection should be organized the follow- 
ing night which should overwhelm the elect of France. 
The Assembly yielded under the pressure, and a Court 
was formed which condemned a few persons, but was 
soon after abolished by the Commune as inadequate. At 
the head of the latter body were Marat, Panis, Collot- 
d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, Tallien, etc., but the most 
prominent man of all was for the moment Danton, who 
was untiring in organizing the '* sections " (as the dif- 
ferent wards of the city were called), and who, from hav- 
ing been the chief agent in the events of the loth, had 
acquired almost the position of dictator. 

Meanwhile the invading army of the Prussians had 
crossed the frontier, while the French frontier troops at 
Sedan, deserted by Lafayette, were disorganized, and 
without a commander. On the 24th of August, the cita- 
del of Longwy capitulated, and by the 30th the enemy 
were bombarding the town of Verdun. In a few days 
the road to Paris would lie open before them. Consterna- 



THE FIRST PARIS COMMUNE 43 

tion prevailed in the capital at the news. In a conference 
between the Ministry and the recently formed Commit- 
tee of General Defense, Danton boldly urged, as against 
a policy of waiting or of open attack, that one of terror- 
ism should be adopted, to first intimidate the reactionary 
population of the city, and through them that of the 
whole country. " The loth of August," said he, " has 
divided France into two parties. The latter, which it is 
useless to dissemble constitutes the minority in the State, 
is the only one on which you can depend when it comes 
to the combat." The timid and irresolute Ministry hesi- 
tated ; Danton betook himself to the Commune. His pro- 
ject was accepted. The minority had indeed to fight the 
majority. Domiciliary visits were made during the night, 
and so large a number of suspected persons arrested, that 
the prisons were filled to overflowing. A vast number of 
citizens were enrolled on the Champ de Mars, and dis- 
patched to the frontier on the ist of September. About 
two o'clock the next day, Sunday, the great bell or tocsin 
was sounded, the call-drum or generale was beaten along 
the thoroughfares, the famous September massacres were 
at hand. Danton, in presenting himself before the As- 
sembly to detail the measures that had been taken (with- 
out its consent) for the safety of the country, gave ut- 
terance to his celebrated mot: — "II faut de I'aiidace, de 
Vaiidace, et ton jours de Vaudace'* (we must have bold- 
ness, boldness, and always boldness). 

The previous night all the gates of the city had been 
closed by order of the municipality, so that none could 
leave or enter ; to the clanging of the tocsin and the roll 
of the generale, was now added the firing of alarm can- 
non. Herewith began the summary executions, as they 
would have have been called had they been done in the 
interests of " established order " by men in uniform, or 
massacres, as they have been termed since they were ef- 
fected in the interests of revolution by men in bonnet 
rouge and Carmagnole costume. The matter originated 



44 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

with the destruction of thirty priests who were being con- 
ducted to the Abbaye. The prisons, about seven in num- 
ber, were then visited in succession by a band of some 
three hundred men. Entrance was demanded by an im- 
provised court, which, once inside, with the prison-reg- 
isters open before them, began to adjudicate. The pris- 
oners were severally called by name, their cases decided 
in a few minutes, after which they were successively re- 
moved nominally to another prison, or to be released. No 
sooner, however, had they reached the outer gate than 
they were met by a forest of pikes and sabres. Those 
that were deemed innocent of treasonable practices, and 
were "enlarged" with the cry of ''Vive la nation!" 
(Long live the nation!), were received with embracings 
and acclamation, but woe betide those who were con- 
ducted to the entrance in silence. Upon them the pikes 
and sabres at once fell, in some cases veritably hewing 
them in pieces. The Princesse de Lamballe, the friend 
and maid-of-honor to Marie Antoinette, had just gone 
to bed when the crowd arrived at the Abbaye where she 
was imprisoned. On being informed she was about to 
be removed, she wanted to arrange her dress, she said ; 
at which the bystanders hinted that from the distance she 
would have to go, it was scarcely worth while to waste 
much time on the toilette. Arrived at the gate, her head 
was struck off, and her body stripped and disembowelled. 
A Sansculotte subsequently boasted of having cooked 
and eaten one of the breasts of the princess. Carlyle 
goes into an ecstatic frenzy over Mdlle. de Lamballe. 
** She was beautiful, she was good," he exclaims (vol. 
iii., chap 4), in a style suggestive of an Irish wake. " Oh ! 
worthy of worship, thou king-descended, god-de- 
scended," etc. He pathetically talks about her ** fair 
hind-head," meaning to imply, I suppose, that she had a 
long, thin neck. But inasmuch as there is no physiolog- 
ical reason for supposing that a long, thin neck involves 
greater suffering to the possessor in the process of de- 



THE FIRST PARIS COMMUNE 45 

capitation than a short, thick one, the point of the re- 
mark is not obvious. Be this as it may, the princess's 
head, with others, was paraded on a pike through the 
streets and under the windows of the " Temple," where 
the queen was confined. These summary executions or 
massacres (according as we choose to call them) outside 
the prisons, continued at intervals from the Sunday after- 
noon to the Thursday evening. Probably about 1,200 
persons in all perished. All contemporary writers agree 
in depicting the graphic horror of the scene as the blood- 
stained crowd swept along the streets from prison to 
prison. 

There is no doubt that the principal actors in these 
events were either under the orders, or were at least in 
communication with the Commune, but the precise nature 
of the connection has not been, and possibly now never 
will be, known. That those concerned were no mere 
wanton or mercenary ruffians, but fanatics, possessed by 
a frenzy of despair, is amply proved by several incidents 
which are admitted even by Royalist writers. Their en- 
thusiasm at the discovery of a " patriot " in one whom 
they believed to have been a " plotter," as is the case of 
M. de Sombreuil, and their refusal of money from such, 
their evident desire to avoid by any accident the death of 
an innocent person, show the executioners to have been, 
at least, genuinely disinterested. There has never in all 
history been more excuse for the shedding of blood than 
there was in Paris, at the beginning of September, 1792. 
Foreign troops were marching on the capital to destroy 
the Revolution, and all favorable to it. The city itself 
was honeycombed with Royalist plotters, who almost 
openly expressed their joy at the prospect of an approach- 
ing restoration, and the extermination of the popular 
leaders. The so-called massacres were strictly a measure 
of self-defence, and as such were justified by the result, 
which was, in a word, to strike terror into the reaction, 
and to stimulate the Revolution throughout France ; and 



46 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

yet there are bourgeois who pretend to view this strictly 
defensive act of a populace driven to desperation, with 
shuddering horror, while regarding as " necessary," or 
at most mildly disapproving the wanton and cold-blooded 
massacres of the Versailles soldiers after the Commune 
of 1 87 1. Such, verily, is class blindness! As in all great 
crises in history, so in the French Revolution, an active 
minority had to fight and terrorize the stolid mass of 
reaction and indifference which, alas! is always in the 
majority. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NATIONAL CONVENTION 

While these events were going on in Paris, Dumouriez, 
the successor of Lafayette as commander-in-chief of the 
French army, was in the east organizing the resistance to 
the invasion. Verdun was taken by the Prussians almost 
without resistance. But the new commander, who, what- 
ever else he may have been, was a man of military genius, 
saw at a glance the strategical situation, and, in opposi- 
tion to the council of war, decided to lose no time in oc- 
cupying the passes of the mountainous district of the 
Argonne. He circumvented the enemy by forced 
marches, and they soon found the road to Paris barred 
by precipitous rocks and well-guarded passes. The Prus- 
sians, notwithstanding, forced one of the more feebly 
defended of the positions, and were on the point of sur- 
rounding the French army when Dumouriez, by a dex- 
terous retreat, succeeded in evading them till the arrival 
of his reinforcements. Meanwhile, the weather helped 
the defenders. Heavy rains converted the bad roads into 
rivers of mud knee deep, and it was not until the 20th of 
the month that the main body of the invaders reached 
the heights of Valmy, where General Kellerman was in 
command, and which they attempted to storm. The re- 
sult decided the fate of the invasion. The Prussians and 
Austrians were completely defeated to the cry of " Vive 
la nation ! " and retired in disorder. Up to this time the 
fortunes of war had been unremittingly adverse to the 
French. But the turning point had come. Henceforward 
the revolutionary army, which from this moment as- 
sumed the offensive, went forth for some time conquer- 

47 



4^ THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

ing and to conquer. The present sketch not being a his- 
tory of the revolutionary war, but of the Revolution it- 
self, I shall in future only allude to the military situation 
in so far as it affects the course of internal affairs. 

The moribund Legislative Assembly lingered on dur- 
ing the election of the Convention — the first political 
body chosen by direct, universal and equal suffrage — 
which did not open its deliberations till the 21st of the 
month. After the usual preliminaries it formally abol- 
ished Royalty, and proclaimed the Republic. Its next 
measure was to declare the new era to date from the cur- 
rent year as the first year of the French Republic. These 
measures were carried by acclamation. But the Conven- 
tion almost immediately became the prey of internal dis- 
sension. This most remarkable of legislative bodies em- 
braced every shade of opinion and almost all the men of 
any prominence in public life. Robespierre, Danton, 
Marat, Desmoulins, David, Roland, Barbaroux, Sieyes, 
Barere, etc., were all now to the fore with many others, 
such as Tallien, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varennes, Bar- 
ras, etc., hitherto less known to fame, but shortly to come 
into unmistakable prominence. One feature of the Con- 
vention is especially remarkable. It embodied the first 
conscious recognition of the principle of International- 
ism. The German atheist, internationalist and humani- 
tarian, Anacharsis Clootz, and the English free-thinker 
and republican Thomas Paine, were among its members. 
Priestly, of Birmingham, the great chemist, had also been 
elected, but declined to sit. In order at once to accen- 
tuate the international conception of the Revolution and 
to create a diversion in the rear of the invading armies, 
the Convention issued a manifesto on November 19, in- 
viting all peoples to rise against their oppressors and as- 
suring them of the sympathy and, when possible, of the 
active support of the French Republic. 

The two great parties in the Convention were the Gi- 
rondists and the Mountainists. The Girondists were the 




THOMAS PAINE 



_...,. »^ ■:t^.- • ■?}►, 




ANACHARSIS CLOOTZ 



THE NATIONAL CONVENTION 49 

party of orderly progress, sweetness, and light, the men 
who dreaded all violent, i. e., energetic measures. Such 
men, however well intentioned they may be, and even 
apart from their ultimate objects, must always in the 
long run become the tools of reaction from their timidity 
and hesitancy. The Girondists desired a doctrinaire Re- 
public, led by the professional middle classes, the law- 
yers and litterateurs. Their main strength lay in the 
provinces, the name being derived from the department 
of the Gironde, whence some of their chief men came. 
Among the leaders of the Girondist party may be men- 
tioned Condorcet, Roland, Louvet, Rebecqe, Petion, Bar- 
baroux, Vergniaud, and Brissot. Some of them had 
been, in spite of their generally mild attitude, active in 
preparing the loth of August. It was, as we have seen, 
Barbaroux who sent to his native town for the Marseil- 
lais, and directed this remarkable body of men on the 
day of the insurrection. 

The other leading party in the Convention were the 
Mountainists, as they were termed, because they sat on 
the benches at the top of the left, comprising the leaders 
of Paris and largely identical in policy with the Com- 
mune, many of whose members sat in both the municipal 
and the legislative bodies. Robespierre, Danton, Marat, 
all the Parisian members, that is, the most advanced 
revolutionary leaders, belonged to the " Mountain," 
which had its strength in the forty-eight " sections," and 
in the faubourgs, or outlying suburbs, in which the popu- 
lace of Paris found voice. The Mountainists advocated 
uncompromising revolutionary principles (besides aiming 
to some extent at economic equality), a vigorous policy 
and a strong centralization, in opposition to the Girondists, 
who favored strictly middle-class Republicanism, a 
timid and vacillating policy, and federalization, or local 
autonomy. The struggle between the Mountain and 
Gironde was in part a struggle for supremacy between 
Paris and the departments. Besides the Mountainists 



so THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

and Girondists proper — i. e., those who represented any 
definite principles at all, who both together constituted a 
minority in the Convention, notwithstanding that they 
dictated its character and policy — there was the actual 
majority which was called the Plain, its members being 
sometimes designated, in ridicule, " frogs of the marsh." 
Like most majorities, the Plain was an inchoate mass of 
floating indifferentism and muddle-headedness, with 
more or less reactionary instincts, which naturally in- 
clined it to the side of the Girondists as the " moderate " 
party, but whose first concern being self-preservation, 
was open to outside pressure from the armed " sections " 
of Paris and the faubourgs, as we shall presently see. 
These *^ men of the plain," or " frogs of the marsh," in- 
cluded many persons of ability, who subsequently came 
to the front under the Directorate, after all danger of 
popular insurrection was at an end. 

War was declared within the Convention before many 
days were over, by the Gironde, on the ostensible pretext 
of the September massacres, which they accused the par- 
tisans of the Mountain of having instigated. The indi- 
viduals attacked were Robespierre and Marat. It was 
the turn of Robespierre first. He was accused of aspir- 
ing to the dictatorship, and the whole force of Giron- 
dist eloquence was brought to bear upon the lean and 
cadaverous ex-advocate of Arras, though without re- 
sult. No definite charges could be formulated against 
him. It is significant, nevertheless, that before Robes- 
pierre had attained any supreme prominence he should 
have excited feelings of such keen personal animosity. 
As a matter of fact, Danton had had far more directly to 
do with the so-called massacres than Robespierre. It 
was Marat's turn next. Marat, whose single-mindedness 
and absolute self-sacrifice are almost unique in history, 
had the misfortune to be physically an unattractive per- 
sonality. He suffered from an unpleasant skin malady, 
which, as it happens, was not syphilis, as many writers 



THE NATIONAL CONVENTION 5^ 

have hinted, but seems to have been of the nature of the 
sheep-disease known as the scabies. It was very possibly 
contracted, and without doubt considerably aggravated, 
through semi-starvation and the cellar-life he was com- 
pelled to lead during the early part of the Revolution. 
Marat, then, was denounced in the Convention by the 
Girondins, and when he arose to defend himself he was 
for a moment basely deserted even by his colleagues of 
the Mountain. " I have a great many enemies in this 
Assembly," he said, as he rose to reply to his accusers. 
" All ! All ! " shouted the Convention as one man. How- 
ever, Marat proceeded amidst uproar and howls to excul- 
pate himself, till in the end the simple earnestness of his 
eloquence prevailed, and he sat down amid a storm of 
applause. But the Girondists, though discomfited for 
the time, did not lose sight of their design to destroy 
Marat. In the midst of these recriminations and inter- 
nal squabbles, the Mountain succeeded in getting the unity 
of the Republic decreed, a heavy blow to the Federalist 
Girondins. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING 

A TRUCE to personal squabbles having been for a mo- 
ment agreed upon, the Convention was proceeding to dis- 
cuss the new Constitution when, on the motion of the 
Mountain, the question of the disposal of the King was 
declared urgent. The popular resentment against the de- 
throned monarch had been growing for some time past. 
Continual addresses from the departments, as well as from 
the Paris sections, were being received praying for his 
condemnation. The usual legal questions being raised 
as to the power of any tribunal to try the sovereign, it 
was agreed by the Committee appointed to consider the 
matter, that though Louis had been inviolable as King of 
France, he was no longer so as the private individual 
Louis Capet. The Mountain vehemently attacked this 
view. St. Just, Robespierre, and others declared that 
these legal quibbles were an insult to the people's sov- 
ereignty, that the King had already been judged by vir- 
tue of the insurrection, and that nothing remained but 
his condemnation and execution. Just at this time an 
iron chest was found behind a panel of the Tuileries, 
containing damning proofs of Court intrigues with Mira- 
beau, and with the ** emigrant " aristocrats, also indicat- 
ing that the war with Austria had been urged on with a 
view to betraying the country and the Revolution. This 
naturally gave force to the demand for the immediate 
condemnation of Louis as a " traitor to the French and 
guilty towards humanity.'* The agitation was vigorously 
sustained in the Jacobins' club and in the sections, and 
the " moderate " party in the Assembly found itself com- 

52 



TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING 53 

pelled to give heed to the popular outcry, at least up to 
a certain point. The Convention by a considerable ma- 
jority decided against the extreme right, who urged the 
inviolability of the King, and also against those Moun- 
tainists who pressed for a condemnation without trial. It 
was determined to bring the ex-King to the bar of the 
Convention. The act declaratory of the Royal crimes 
was then prepared. 

Meanwhile Louis was being strictly guarded in the 
' Temple," where he had now been confined nearly four 
months. He had recently been separated from his family, 
the Commune fearing the concerting of plots of escape. 
Only one servant was allotted to the whole family. Louis 
amused himself at this time with reading Hume's His- 
tory of England, especially the parts relating to Charles 
L On the vote of the Convention being declared, San- 
terre, the commandant of the National Guard, was com- 
missioned to conduct Louis to the bar of the National 
Assembly. This took place on the nth of December. 
The coach passed through drizzling rain, scowling 
crowds, and through streets filled with troops. Arrived 
at the hall of the Convention, the Mayor of Paris, Chabot, 
and the Procureur, Chaumette, who had sat with the King 
in the vehicle, delivered him over to Santerre who had 
been in attendance outside. The latter, laying hold of 
Louis by the arm, led him to the bar of the Convention. 
Barere, the President, after a moment's delay, greeted 
him with the words, " Louis, the French nation accuses 
you; you are now about to hear the act of accusation. 
Louis, you may sit down," There were fifty-seven counts 
of the indictment relating to acts of despotism, con- 
spiracies, secret intrigues, the flight to Varennes, and 
what not. On the conclusion of the speech for the prose- 
cution, which lasted three hours, Louis was removed back 
to his prison. He had demanded legal counsel, so the 
Convention decided after some discussion to allow his 
old friend Meleherbes, with two others. Tronchet and 



54 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Deseze, to undertake the office. It was the latter who 
delivered the speech on the day of the defence, which 
consisted partly in the old arguments anent royal inviola- 
bility and partly in a statement of Louis's services to the 
people. '' The people," said Deseze, " desired that a dis- 
astrous impost should be abolished, and Louis abolished 
it; the people asked for the abolition of servitudes, and 
Louis abolished them; they demanded reforms, and he 
consented to them," etc., etc. The speech concluded with 
an eloquent peroration calling upon history to judge the 
decision of the Convention. The cowardly Girondins, 
although it was well-known they had previously been in 
favor of the King's life, did not have the courage at this 
moment to make a definite stand one way or the other. 
They contented themselves with proposing to declare 
Louis guilty, but to leave the question of punishment to 
the primary assemblies of the people. This proposition, 
which would probably have meant civil war, was vehe- 
mently opposed by the Mountain and rejected, and the 
Convention, after having unanimously voted Louis guilty, 
resolved on considering the question of punishment. The 
popular ferment outside the Convention was immense, 
and sentence of death was loudly demanded. After forty 
hours, the final vote was taken, and Louis condemned to 
" death without respite," i. e., within twenty-four hours, 
by a majority of 26 in an assembly of 721. In vain did 
the defenders urge the smallness of the majority; the 
Mountain, which now for the first time dominated the 
Convention, showed itself inexorable. 

On Monday, the 21st of January, 1793, the execu- 
tion took place. Louis, who had taken leave of his family 
the previous day, was awakened at five o'clock. Shortly 
after, Santerre arrived to announce that it was the hour 
to depart. At the same time the murmur of crowds and 
the rumbling of cannon were heard outside. The car- 
riage took upwards of an hour to pass through the streets, 
which were lined with military. At length the Place de 



TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING 55 

la Revolution was reached, and Louis ascended the scaf- 
fold. He was beginning to protest his innocence, when 
on the signal of Santerre his voice was drowned by the 
beating of drums, the executioner seized him, and in a 
moment all was over. 

The death of Louis was probably necessary for the 
safety of the Republic at the time, but one cannot help 
having some pity for one whose worst offences were a 
certain feebleness and good nature which made him 
the ready tool of a cruel, unscrupulous and designing 
woman. It should be noted, as regards the decree in the 
Convention, that, unlike the Girondins, plucky Tom 
Paine, up to the last, manfully voted in the sense in which 
he had always spoken, viz., for the life of the King, and 
this at the imminent risk of his own. Notwithstanding 
this act, a grateful Respectability (which afterwards 
tried to exalt the feeble Louis into a hero and a martyr) 
has ever since heaped every vile calumny on poor Paine's 
memory. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE DEATH STRUGGLE BETWEEN MOUNTAIN AND GIRONDE 

On the evening of the final vote in the Convention on 
the matter of the King, Lepelletier de St. Fargeaux, a 
deputy and ex-noble, who had voted with the majority, 
was assassinated by an ex-royal guard in a cafe. On 
the Thursday following he received a public funeral, his 
remains being interred in the Pantheon of g^eat men. The 
Convention, Municipality, and all the revolutionary so- 
cieties followed in a body. This was the last united action 
of the various parties. 

The feud between Mountain and Gironde broke out 
with renewed fury after the temporary cessation. The 
quarrel was intensified out of doors by the old but ever- 
increasing lack of the necessaries of life, especially of 
bread. The queues at the bakers* shops assumed more 
formidable dimensions, developing into mobs and dev- 
astating provision shops. Marat had suggested in his 
journal that a few of the forestallers who were helping to 
keep up the price of bread should be hanged at the doors 
of bakers* shops. The crowds, dressed in carmagnole, 
or merely ragged, maddened by hunger, danced the more 
wildly to the well-known strains, " Vive le son du canon." 
Day and night groups of these revolutionary revelers 
might be met along the thoroughfares. 

Meanwhile " the sound of the cannon " was going on 
with vigor and to the honor and glory of France. Du- 
mouriez had invaded and conquered the Netherlands, and 
the Jacobins and other revolutionary bodies had sent 
missionaries to the newly-annexed provinces. But the 
powers, great and small, finding themselves and the aris- 

56 



MOUNTAIN AND GIRONDE 57 

tocratic-monarchic order they represented being beaten 
all along the line, drew closer together and made new 
levies. England, Spain, Italy, Austria, Prussia, the small 
German States, hurled new and gigantic armaments into 
the breach. The Convention answered in its turn by a 
fresh levy of 300,000 men. But Danton and the Moun- 
tain demanded at the same moment that while external 
enemies were being fought internal enemies should not 
be neglected. They proposed that a tribunal composed of 
nine members should judge without jury and without ap- 
peal. The tribunal was instituted but the jury added. 
Dumouriez now sustained some reverses in his invasion 
of Holland. He was ordered back into Belgium, but this 
did not satisfy the Mountain and the Jacobins, who had 
for long looked askance at Dumouriez as a Girondist 
partisan, and became now more convinced than ever that 
he was working in the interest of the faction, and that 
the defeat was due to treachery. The Girondin ministers 
and generals were the objects of the bitterest resentment. 
So high did the feeling run that a conspiracy was set on 
foot to assassinate the leading men of the party in the 
Convention on the night of the loth of March. The con- 
spirators, it is alleged, actually set out, but the plan mis- 
carried, owing to its betrayal beforehand to the persons 
threatened. Vergniaud, the great Girondin orator, de- 
nounced the plot next day in the Assembly, and the ad- 
vanced parties were for a moment checked. But the news 
of the spread of the aristocratic revolt in the district of 
the Loire known as La Vendee, quickly enabled them to 
regain their ascendancy. 

The Vendee was a district in which there were no large 
towns, and consequently hardly any middle class or pro- 
letariat. It was a district inhabited almost exclusively 
by peasants, priests, and nobles, and consequently alto- 
gether out of touch with the objects of the Revolution. 
The peasantry still venerated their old masters, and hated 
the new middle class. The immediate cause of the fresh 



S8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

outbreak, however, was the new levy. In Paris the feel- 
ing against " Moderates " and half-hearted friends of the 
Republic waxed greater than ever. The new Revolution- 
ary Tribunal redoubled its activity. Following upon the 
bad news from the Vendee came that of further and still 
more serious reverses in Belgium on the part of Du- 
mouriez, and, what was worse, indisputable evidence of 
intrigues with the Austrians to reestablish the monarchy 
in the person of the Due de Chartres, the young son of 
Philippe d'Orleans Egalite (the King's cousin and a mem- 
ber of the Mountain party). This Due de Chartres, at 
that time a lieutenant of Dumouriez, became subsequently 
" Louis Philippe, King of the French." Dumouriez al- 
most immediately after openly proclaimed his intention 
of marching upon Paris to subdue the Revolution. But 
he did not succeed any better than Lafayette, his prede- 
cessor in the same course. His troops, although attached 
to him personally, hesitated at treachery to the Republic. 
The same with the officers. The Convention was ener- 
getic; it sent four commissioners, among them the Min- 
ister of War, to summon the traitor-general to the bar of 
the Convention. He not only refused to come, but handed 
over the commissioners as hostages to the Austrians. 
After a further fruitless attempt to seduce the army he 
sought refuge with the Due de Chartres and a few other 
officers in the Austrian camp, and from this time his- 
tory knows him no more. Dumouriez's defection drove 
the last nail into the coffin of the Girondist power. There 
is a well-known proverb that those whom the gods would 
destroy they first make mad. This was certainly exem- 
plified in the present case. For the Girondins had al- 
ready, before their General Dumouriez's escape had be- 
come known, alienated the leading Mountainist who had 
been in favor of reconciliation between the parties — 
Danton, to wit — by unsubstantiated insinuations. And 
now, when Dumouriez's desertion had been for days past 
a topic of discussion and declamation amongst the Paris 



MOUNTAIN AND GIRONDE 59 

sections, they succeeded, amid scenes of violent disorder 
in the Convention, in getting a decree of indictment 
launched against Marat on the ground of the paragraph 
about the forestallers. The People's Friend was accord- 
ingly brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, the 
Girondists vainly attempting to pack the jury. After a 
trial lasting two days he was acquitted amid the acclama- 
tions of the audience, and carried in triumph by the pop- 
ulace into the hall of the Convention. Girondism was 
henceforth plainly a lost cause so far as peaceful and legal 
action was concerned. Its only hope lay in an insurrection 
of the departments. This also, as we shall see, was des- 
tined to failure. Meanwhile Custine, Dampierre, and 
other generals were sent to reorganize the armies of Du- 
mouriez, but for the next few weeks the main attention 
of all patriots was directed to one object — the destruc- 
tion of the Girondist faction. 






CHAPTER XIV 

CONCERNING MATTERS ECONOMIC 

Amid all this contention the Mountain, aided by eco- 
nomic pressure, succeeded in forcing through some im- 
portant administrative, and two great economic measures. 
In addition to the " Revolutionary Tribunal," two pow- 
erful committees were established which, in the end, prac- 
tically assumed all the executive functions of a dictatorial 
ministry. These were the " Committee of General Se- 
curity," consisting of twenty-one members, and the 
" Committee of Public Safety," consisting of nine mem- 
bers, the ministers themselves being subject to these Com- 
mittees. The economic measures referred to were, first, 
the Law of maximum, by means of which, at a stroke, 
the starvation and misery previously existing were al- 
layed. The law of maximum enacted a fixed price for 
breadstuffs, above which it was penal to sell them. To 
avert the possibility of the dealers refusing to sell at all, 
it was made compulsory upon them to do so. They were, 
moreover, obliged to furnish accurate accounts of their 
stock, which could, if desirable, be peremptorily ** checked" 
by the authorities. The law was subsequently extended 
to all the necessaries of life. The other economic measure 
forced through the Convention by the Jacobins and the 
Mountain was a progressive income-tax on an ascending 
scale. In addition to these there was a forced loan of a 
milliard for war purposes levied on the wealthy classes. 
The Girondists and the Plain, of course, shrieked and 
kicked at these glaring infringements of the " laws " of 
political economy and the rights of property; but the 
middle-class factions, though nominally dominant, were 

60 



CONCERNING MATTERS ECONOMIC 6i 

not really so, and were hence unable to resist the force of 
the popular demand for decisive steps in the direction of 
greater economic equalit3^ 

The law of maximum and the progressive income-tax 
are the only two measures of a directly Socialistic tend- 
ency which have ever been practically applied, and they 
were applied with complete success. And yet it is strange 
that at least the first of these measures, when proposed 
nowadays, is viewed by many Socialists with indiffer- 
ence, not to say suspicion. It only shows how, in eco- 
nomics as in other things, the rags of old superstitions 
unconsciously survive in us. Those who have triumphed 
over the old-fashioned bourgeois fallacies of the wicked- 
ness and inutility of interfering with the sacred laws of 
political economy by direct legislative interference with 
the freedom of production, still wince at the notion of 
direct legislative interference with freedom (so called) of 
exchange. An eight-hour law is an excellent thing, but 
a maximum, by which the eight-hour workman is pro- 
tected from the extortions of monopoly and the power of 
industrial and commercial capital to raise prices, guard- 
ing itself against the effects of competition by " rings " 
and *' corners " — this is a very doubtful thing indeed ! 
In the present day, of course, a law of maximum would 
be of very little use unless supplemented by a law of 
minimum — i. e., a law fixing a minimum wage— -and, 
we may add, parenthetically, the eight hours working day 
would, in all probability, also prove itself a questionable 
boon if unaccompanied by both these provisos. But in 
France at the end of the last century it was not so. The 
petite industrie prevailed everywhere except in the large 
towns, where the workshop system had obtained a foot- 
ing, though even there without having by any means 
entirely supplanted the smaller production. The law of 
maximum alone was therefore sufficient to meet all re- 
quirements. Scarcity and want there was still, but it was 
a scarcity and want due, for the most part, to other than 



62 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

remediable social conditions. Bad harvests, the devas- 
tations of foreign invasion and civil war, had reduced 
France to the lowest ebb. The law of maximum saved 
it. With the two francs a day which was voted at a sub- 
sequent period as the allowance of every attendant at 
the primary assemblies of the sections or wardships, of 
which there were 44,000 in all France, the problem of the 
unemployed was solved for the nonce. The number 
of the unemployed in all trades ministering to the lux- 
uries of the rich may be imagined, and a measure of this 
kind was absolutely essential. 

The net result of the interference by the Convention 
with the " Laws of Political Economy " is well expressed 
by Carlyle, where he declares that " there is no period 
to be met with in which the general 25,000,000 of France 
suffered less than in this period, which they name reign 
of terror." Time was as yet not ripe for the great con- 
structive movement of modern Socialism, and hence the 
merely remedial treatment here explained was all that 
could even be attempted. The great fact to be noted is 
that, for the first time in history, the cry for material 
and social equality as opposed to mere political and 
legal equality, became definitely articulate. That cry has 
often enough since been smothered, but has always made 
itself heard again at short intervals. The party of the 
Mountain and the Jacobins, the Baboeuf conspiracy, the 
Chartist movement, the days of June, 1848, the Commune 
of 1 87 1, are all so many stages in the awakening of the 
proletariat to the full consciousness of itself which it 
attains in modern Socialism. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 

Apart from the laws referred to in the last chapter, 
which were with difficulty forced through the Legisla- 
ture by the Mountain, the six weeks which elapsed be- 
tween the acquittal of Marat and the 2d of June, the 
day of the extinction of the Girondist power, were fruit- 
ful in nothing but a progressive mutual exacerbation of 
the two parties. Petitions and deputations began to pour 
in praying for the expulsion and even condemnation of 
some twenty-two of the leading Girondists. On the loth 
of May the Convention shifted its quarters from the old 
Riding School to the Tuileries. The avenues to the new 
Convention hall were continually blocked by sansculottes 
(the breechless), the name given to the party of the peo- 
ple since the emeute of the 21st of June, 1792, when 
among other emblems a pair of black breeches had been 
paraded in token of the want of these commodities by 
the working classes of France. At last the Girondins 
made up their minds for a dashing stroke. Guadet sud- 
denly moved the immediate suppression of the Commune, 
its place to be filled ad interim by the presidents of the 
sections, the transference of the legislation to Bourges 
with the smallest possible delay, and the despatch of the 
decree into the provinces by expresses. The Mountain 
was taken unawares, and it is possible, if the Girondists 
had had the courage to proceed to action immediately, 
they might have been successful. But this they did not 
dare do in face of the urgency of the situation on the 
frontier, well knowing that civil war would be the out- 
come. Indeed, it is doubtful whether they could have in 

63 



64 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

any case obtained a majority in the Assembly under the 
circumstances. Barere proposed, as a compromise, the 
establishment of a commission of twelve members to in- 
quire into the conduct of the municipality, to search out 
the plots of the Jacobins, and to arrest suspected per- 
sons. The proposition was accepted, and the commission 
established. Under the pretence of having discovered a 
new conspiracy it immediately proceeded to imprison 
several prominent persons, among them being the secre- 
tary of the Commune, Hebert, editor of the Pere Du- 
chesne newspaper. This at once excited immense popu- 
lar indignation. Deputation followed deputation de- 
manding Hebert's release. The Commune, the Moun- 
tainist mayor Pache at its head, placed itself in perma- 
nent connection with the committees of the sections, 
which, together with the clubs of the Jacobins and Cor- 
deliers, declared themselves in permanent session. 

On the 27th of May, the rising of Paris against the 
Convention began. The Commune presented itself before 
the Convention in a body, demanding the release of 
Hebert, its chief secretary, and the suppression of the 
Girondist Commission. Deputies from the sections fol- 
lowed, all calling for its suppression, and some for the 
arrest of its members. The Girondist president, Isnard, 
met these demands with the threat that the departments 
should be razed and Paris annihilated, so that " the way- 
farer would have to inquire on which side of the Seine 
Paris had stood," a reply which became the signal for a 
general revolt of the Mountain. 

The hall was now the scene of violent confusion, in 
which swords and pistols were drawn, and during which 
the crowd poured in, the upshot being that Isnard was 
compelled to leave the chair and make way for the Moun- 
tainist and friend of Danton, Herault de Sechelles. He- 
rault at once replied, conceding the demands of the peti- 
tioners. 

The Mountain had won the day; Hebert's arrest was 




JEAN PAUL MARAT 



THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 65 

annulled, and the commission suppressed amid the ac- 
clamation of the populace. The next day the Girondists, 
with suicidal folly, succeeded by a scratch majority in re- 
establishing the Commission on the ground that the pro- 
ceedings of the previous day had been irregular. A ver- 
itable yell of indignation from clubs, sections, and muni- 
cipality greeted this resolution. Robespierre, Danton, 
Marat, Chaumette, and Pache constituted themselves 
into an informal committee to organize anew the move- 
ment. On the 30th, the clubs and sections publicly de- 
clared themselves in a state of insurrection, their dele- 
gates, to the number of ninety-six, entering the Hotel de 
Ville, and as a matter of form annulling the municipality 
(as a legally constituted body), but immediately rein- 
stating its members in their functions under insurrection- 
ary auspices. Mayor Pache was sent to report the matter 
to the Convention, while Henriot, the new commandant 
of the National Guard, called upon the sections to be 
ready for action at any moment, the sansculottes to be 
allowed two francs a day so long as they remained under 
orders. Early the following morning, the 31st, the tocsin 
was rung and the generate beat, and the armed sections 
were assembled and marched upon the Tuileries. 

The signal for the insurrection was an alarm cannon 
which was fired just as Mayor Pache was making his re- 
port, and, it must be admitted, trying to hoodwink the 
legislature with the pretence that he was not privy to the 
proceedings. The consternation in the assembly at the 
ominous sound was general. Danton rushed to the 
tribune to demand anew the suppression of the Commis- 
sion. All the leading Mountainists did the same. The 
majority still hesitated. Deputations now began to arrive 
thick and fast, till all the gangways were blocked up by 
excited crowds. The suppression of the Commission and 
the arrest of its members, and of the other leading Gi- 
rondists, was loudly demanded on all sides. Various 
propositions were being discussed when the report spread 



66 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

that the Tuileries were surrounded by armed forces and 
the Convention no longer free. Even some members of 
the Mountain winced at this " outrage " on the '' national 
sovereignty." At length it was decided that the Assem- 
bly should march out in a body and confront the insur- 
gents. This was done, Herault de Sechelles leading the 
way. They were met by Henriot on horseback at the 
head of the armed bands, brandishing a sabre. " The 
people want not phrases," he said, ** but the arrest of 
twenty-two traitors." 

Two cannons were immediately pointed straight at the 
Convention, which prudently retired. All the other exits 
from the Tuileries Gardens were found to bristle equally 
with pikes and sabres, so there was nothing for it but to 
go back again into the hall. The popular demands were 
no longer opposed. Marat, who had been the life and 
soul of the whole movement throughout, now dictated the 
names of the proscribed and the form of the resolution, 
from the tribune. All the leading Girondins, including 
the twelve forming the Commission, were placed under 
arrest. Upon the result being known outside, the insur- 
gents quickly dispersed. Thus perished Girondism. Ever 
since the loth of August, the nominal power in the State 
had been in the hands of the Girondist party, although, 
as we have seen, the real power was very far from being 
so. Henceforth they were a proscribed faction, whose 
members at last thought themselves lucky if they could 
find a comer of France in which to conceal themselves. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE SANSCULOTTE IN POWER 

The Girondists, driven successively from the Munici- 
pality, the Jacobins' Club, the Ministry, and finally from 
the Convention, now played out their last card, the at- 
tempt to raise the Provinces, which were largely with 
them. Never was the position of France more desperate 
than at this moment. *' La Vendee " in open and hitherto 
successful insurrection on one side, the coalition of Europe 
again pouring in its levies on three sides, and a Girond- 
ist insurrection brewing at several points in the interior. 
The Girondists, after their defeat in Paris, tried to rally 
at Caen, in Normandy, which town became the head- 
quarters of the conspiracy as long as it lasted. Negotia- 
tions were entered into with General Wimpfen and a 
Royalist, one Cbmte Puisaye. Somehow, in spite of the 
sympathy of the departments, especially the large middle- 
class towns, the project failed completely as a general 
movement, partly owing to mismanagement, want of con- 
cert and Royalist intrigues, which alienated many other- 
wise sympathetic, partly to the presence of the foreign 
invader, and partly to the vigorous action of the leaders 
of the Revolution in Paris. The provinces hesitated, the 
insurgents dispersed, a few towns in the south only re- 
maining to the Girondins. The insurrection did not mis- 
carry for want of tall talk, it is certain, for the Girondins 
as usual were eloquent in threats couched in well-rounded 
periods. 

While this was going on a young woman of " good " 
family in Caen, who had been largely in the society of 
Girondins, and had heard much talk of Marat as the 

67 



6S THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ' 

leader of the recent movement, without stating her inten- 
tion to anybody, traveled up to Paris by diligence, and 
obtaining an interview with the popular leader under the 
pretext of furnishing information of the conspiracy at 
Caen, murdered him. Poor Marat, who was almost dying 
at the time, was in a bath, his helpless condition rendering 
him an easy prey to the knife of his dastardly assassin. 
A few sous only were found in his possession. 

Thus perished the first great vindicator of the rights 
of the modern proletariat, a truly single-minded champion 
of the oppressed. Of average intellect merely, it is 
Marat's unique and titanic force of character which must 
make him immortal in history. 

Charlotte Corday was tried and condemned before the 
revolutionary tribunal, maintaining a theatrical demeanor 
to the last. She was guillotined on the 17th of July, 
three days after the assassination. A poor fool, a native 
of Mainz, Adam Lutz by name, went crazy over her. 

The death of the " people's friend " caused a veritable 
panic in the ranks of the revolutionary party. No 
" patriot " was without some token of him. He was in- 
voked in every revolutionary function, and his bust was 
crowned in all public assemblies. The Convention unan- 
imously granted him the honors of the Pantheon. The 
fugitive Girondins now found their position harder than 
ever. They had to fly from Caen before the emissaries 
of the Mountain. Jacobin commissioners were scouring 
the country up and down, the revolutionary power in 
Paris having developed an almost superhuman activity. 
The only places where the insurrection still flickered on 
were in Lyons, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, cities which 
had compromised themselves too far to hope for forgive- 
ness from the Convention, and which (notably Lyons) 
were destined before long to feel the heavy hand of 
sansculottic vengeance. 

Yet notwithstanding the virtual collapse of the Giron- 
dist rebellion the state of affairs had hardly improved. 



THE SANSCULOTTE IN POWER 69 

The armies, now again everywhere on the defensive, were 
disorganized and dispirited. Things still seemed utterly 
hopeless. If France was to be saved it could only be by 
a dead lift. The revolutionary power in Paris now con- 
sisted of the Convention (or rather the Mountain, which 
dominated the whole assembly), the two committees (of 
General Security and of Public Safety), the Commune, 
or Municipality, and, lastly, the clubs of the Jacobins 
and Cordeliers, especially the former, whose deliberations 
were hardly second in importance to those of the Con- 
vention. The primary assemblies of the forty-eight sec- 
tions, in which every citizen was free to express his opin- 
ion, but which were almost entirely appropriated by the 
Sansculottes, together with the " revolutionary commit- 
tees " attached to them, were also a considerable factor 
in public affairs. 

This agglomeration of popular forces constituted the 
power which had to raise France and the Revolution out 
of the abyss into which they had sunk. The consolidation 
of the new government was the first thing to be at- 
tempted. The long-talked-of Constitution was next put 
in hand, Herault de Sechelles being entrusted with the 
task of drawing it up. This celebrated Constitution of 
*93, for long regarded as the sheet anchor of Sansculot- 
tism, is probably the most thoroughgoing scheme of pure 
democracy ever devised. It not only formally recognized 
the people as the sole primary source of power, but it 
delegated the exercise of that power directly to them. 
Every measure was to be submitted to the primary as- 
semblies of the " sections," of which there were forty- 
four thousand in all France. The magistrates were to be 
reelected at the shortest possible intervals by simple ma- 
jority. The central legislature was to Be renewed an- 
nually, consisting of delegates from the primary assem- 
blies, who were to be furnished with imperative mandates. 

This constitution passed the Convention, and was ac- 
cepted by a large majority of th& " sections ** throughout 



70 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

France. The representatives of the said forty-four thou- 
sand wardships, when they came to the Convention, de- 
manded, in face of the existing emergency, " the arrest 
of all suspected persons and a general rising of the peo- 
ple." Danton, in a vigorous speech, moved that the com- 
missioners of the primary assemblies should be instructed 
to report the state of r.rms, provisions, and ammunition, 
and to raise a levy of four hundred thousand men, and 
that the Convention should take the oath of death or 
victory. This was carried unanimously. A few days 
after, Barere, in the name of the Committees, proposed 
still more decisive measures. All the male population, 
from eighteen to forty, were placed under arms, and new 
requisitions were made. Soon there were forty armies, 
comprising in all 1,200,000 men. The Committee of Pub- 
lic Safety, with Carnot (grandfather of the late Pres- 
ident of the French Republic) as chief of the War De- 
partment, were untiring in their energies in organizing 
the defence. Forty sous a day was enacted as the allow- 
ance of every Sectionist. The famous Law of Suspects 
was passed, and wholesale arrests were made of persons 
thought to be of Girondist or Royalist sympathies. The 
middle classes fared now as badly as the aristocracy had 
previously. The reign of terror had begun, necessitated 
by the same exigencies as the September massacres — 
imminent foreign invasion combined with domestic 
treachery. As before, the moment decisive action was 
taken, matters began to mend on all sides, for though 
Toulon was in the hands of the English, Marseilles and 
Bordeaux were taken from the Girondin insurgents, and 
Lyons besieged. The Constitution, although carried, was 
suspended in face of the emergency, and, as a matter of 
fact, was never put into force. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE COMMUNE 

The Revolutionary power in Paris, as we have said, 
was nominally divided between the Commune, at the 
head of which were Hebert and Chaumette, the two com- 
mittees, which included Robespierre, Danton, Camot, etc., 
the Convention, and the popular clubs, whose influence, 
though unofficial and indirect, was in no respect less than 
that of the representative assembly itself. During the 
period from August loth, 1792, to the opening of the 
Convention (21st Sept.), the chief center of power lay 
with the Commune led by Danton; from the 21st of Sep- 
tember to the 2d of June, the Convention, as a body, 
was more or less dominant; in the period from the 2d 
of June, 1793, to the end of the year, power resided 
mainly in the Commune, led by the Hebertists ; thence- 
forward to the 27th of July, 1794 (the fall of Robes- 
pierre), it was the committees, especially the Committee 
of Public Safety, which practically dictated to France. 
The Jacobins' Club meanwhile reflected for the most part 
the attitude of the dominant Parisian opinion, and of 
the governing body. It underwent several epurations, 
or purifications, in the course of the revolutionary period, 
on which occasions a batch of members, whose views 
were out of accord with the prevalent feeling of the hour, 
would be expelled. 

Almost simultaneously with the collapse of the Giron- 
dist rising and the entry of the Convention troops into 
the cities of the south, the tide began to turn in La 
Vendee; the attempt of the insurgents to take Nantes 
failed, and though the insurrection lingered on for some 

71 



72 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

time longer it never again became formidable. The 
revolutionary armies, indeed, were nearly everywhere 
victorious under the new generals, Moreau, Hoche, 
Pichegru, Jourdan, Kellerman, etc. The Prussians and 
Austrians, under the command of the Prince of Coburg, 
were dislodged from their vantage ground in the east; 
the Spaniards driven back in the south, and the English 
and Hanoverians defeated in the north. Thus a second 
time was France, by a stupendous dead-lift effort, saved 
from imminent ruin by the raw levies of the Revolution. 

The victories of Dumouriez in '92 were repeated on a 
grander scale in the great campaign, which the genius of 
Carnot " organized " in '93 and '94. The Revolution now 
was answering the coalition in the spirit of Damon's 
defiant menace " the combined kings threaten us, we 
hurl at their feet as gage of battle the head of a king." 
France was converted into one vast camp. But for many 
months yet the French were not destined to feel them- 
selves " out of the wood." The dread of possible re- 
verses followed by invasion and political extinction was 
ever before their eyes. And hence it was not till the end 
of July, '94, that the reaction against the " Terror " had 
gathered strength enough to overthrow the system itself. 
So long as danger threatened from without, public opin- 
ion tolerated the guillotine, and at the period at which we 
have arrived, the great activity of that famous instrument 
began. The " law of the suspect," which enabled the 
committees of the sections to arrest all suspected persons 
and incarcerate them prior to their being brought before 
the revolutionary tribunal, speedily filled the prisons to 
overflowing. After conviction and death the property 
of the executed was confiscated by the State. 

The Commune was the virtual head of the revolution- 
ary committees of the sections in the provinces as well as 
in Paris. It had a special force of 7,000 men, commanded 
by Ronsin, the dramatist, and called the " Revolutionary 
Army," under its orders, besides flying columns in its 



THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE COMMUNE 73 

pay scouring different parts of the country. The Com- 
mune may be taken as the representative in the Revolu- 
tion of the proletarian interest pure and simple. Though 
the circumstances of the time caused it to be, unhappily, 
an instrument of the Terror, its activity was by no means 
confined to this. The Commune made it pretty soon evi- 
dent that in its eyes the existence of a commercial middle 
class was quite as incompatible with the welfare of the 
people as that of an aristocracy. 

Economical equality was the avowed end of the Revo- 
lution for the Commune. Hebert and Chaumette, never- 
theless, busied themselves with various projects of a pal- 
iative character, such as hospital and prison reform. They 
attempted to introduce primary and secular education 
into every village in France. The law of maximum (and 
compulsory sale) was at their suggestion enlarged in 
scope, being applied to almost all articles of common 
consumption. Forestalling was forbidden under the 
heaviest penalties. A maximum was even applied to 
wages at this time, a proceeding calculated in a society 
not yet out of the small production to make considerable 
havoc with what some people call the " rent of ability," 
though it was enacted solely with a view to government 
employment for the national defence. The Bourse was 
closed. Financial and commercial syndicates were dis- 
solved. The paper money, or assignats, were made com- 
pulsory tender at their nominal value. 

On the 5th of October the new Republican calendar, 
the joint work of the astronomer Romme, who furnished 
the calculations, and the clever feuilletonist, Fabre d'Eg- 
lantine, who supplied the poetical nomenclature, came into 
operation. The new era was to date from the declaration 
of the Republic, the 21st of September, 1792, so that the 
months do not coincide with those of the ordinar}^ calen- 
dar. The three autumn months were Vendemiaire, or 
the vintage month, Brumaire, or the foggy month, and 
'Frimaire, or the frosty month ; the three winter months, 



74 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Nivose, or the snowy month, Pluviose, or the rainy 
month, and Ventose, or the windy month; the three 
spring months, Germinal, or the budding month, Floreal, 
or the flowery month, and Prairial, or the meadowy 
month; and the three summer months, Messidor, or the 
reaping month, Thermidor, or the heating month, and 
Fructidor, or the fruiting month. The week of seven 
days was abolished and decades or periods of ten days 
instituted instead. 

But the work for which the Commune is most fa- 
mous is the establishment of the new Cultus — the Wor- 
ship of Reason. The Hebertists, as the party of the Com- 
mune were now called, and among whom was Anacharsis 
Clootz, were firmly convinced that deliverance from the 
dogmas of supernatural religion was the necessary com- 
plement of deliverance from the thraldom of privilege and 
wealth. In accordance with i8th century habits of 
thought, especially in France with its classicism, the idea 
naturally suggested itself of initiating a worship of Rea- 
son as personified, on the ruins of God, Christ, and the 
Virgin. For some time past, stimulated by the mission- 
aries of the Commune, numbers of priests had been send- 
ing in their demissions, declaring they would no longer 
preach a lie, and that Liberty and the public welfare were 
their only gods. The church plate in every part of France 
was melted down for patriotic uses, vestments, bibles, 
and breviaries rriade bonfires, to the accompaniment of 
the " Carmagnole." Early in November Gobel, the Arch- 
bishop of Paris, together with his chapter, entered the 
Convention hall to publicly renounce the Christian faith. 
Christian rites and worship were now proscribed, and a 
Festival of Reason was decreed by the Commune at the 
instance of Chaumette. A few days later a proces- 
sion of citizens and citizenesses, in priestly vestments, 
and other fantastic costumes, followed by mules and 
barrows laden with church furniture, defiled into the 
Convention, and after chanting strophes to Reason, pro- 



THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE COMMUNE 75 

ceeded to dance the " Carmagnole," many of the legisla- 
tors taking part. Later on the same day, Procureur 
Chaumette, at the head of the Commune and the presi- 
dents of sections, arrived bearing in their midst, on a 
palanquin, Mdlle. Candeille, the danseuse, in bonnet rouge 
and blue mantle, garlanded with oak as the Goddess of 
Reason. The bulk of the Convention then rose, and after 
giving the goddess the formal kiss, proceeded in a body 
to Notre Dame, where the new worship was inaugurated 
amid music, tricolor, and virgins dressed in white. A 
similar ceremony with other goddesses took place at St. 
Eustache, and other of the principal churches of Paris. 
Commissioners soon established the new worship 
throughout the length and breadth of French territory, 
from Antwerp in the north to Marseilles in the south. 
In place of the Mass the old cathedrals re-echoed to 
strophes in honor of Reason and in praise of " Liberty, 
Equality, and Fraternity." Over the churchyards ap- 
peared the device, " Death is an eternal sleep." Old 
things had passed away, and all things had become new. 
It should be said that the " Goddess of Reason " was 
never intended to be more than a symbol, and not as has 
been sometimes represented, herself an object of worship. 
Viewed in its true light, the idea, if somewhat pedantic 
was not unpleasing. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE TERROR 

By means of its courageous contempt for the so-called 
laws of political economy, its wholesale requisitions and 
the compulsion exercised on all traders and farmers, with 
the aid of its " revolutionary army," to sell at the maxi- 
mum price, the fearful misery occasioned by the circum- 
stances of the time was kept under to a considerable ex- 
tent by the Commune. The revolutionary committees es- 
tablished in every section of France, the ambulatory 
deputies who watched the provinces and were present 
with the military forces, and last, but not least, the army 
of the Commune under General Ronsin, nevertheless had 
hard work to prevent the law of maximum from being 
violated. The Commune now granted a free allowance 
of bread for each family. Arrests in Paris and the pro- 
vinces went on apace. By the end of October 3,000 per- 
sons were in the prisons of Paris alone, the revolution- 
ary committees formed in every section having, as al- 
ready stated, power to arrest all persons suspected of 
reactionary tendencies. 

On the 14th of October the queen, Marie Antoinette, 
was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal and con- 
victed, after two days' hearing, on overwhelming evi- 
dence, of the basest treachery towards France, and of the 
most sanguinary intentions with regard to Paris. It was, 
indeed, high time that this atrocious woman met her de- 
serts. When the country was at the lowest depths of 
misery some years before the outbreak of the Revolution, 
all this abandoned wretch could think of was squandering 
fabulous sums of the nation's wealth, in conjunction with 

76 



THE TERROR 77 

her friend, the Court head prostitute and procuress, the 
Princess de Lamballe (killed in the September massa- 
cres), on jewels, balls, and sinecures for her paramours. 
If anyone ventured to call attention to some flagrant 
abuse in her presence, he was invariably silenced with the 
reply, " Yes, but we must amuse ourselves " (" Oui, mais 
il faut s'amuser"). It was only after her amusements 
had been curtailed by the utter collapse of the finances, a 
consummation to which she had contributed so largely 
by her criminal extravagances, that she began to interest 
herself in public affairs. Her aim was then to get back 
the means for her debaucheries, and when the Revolution 
broke out and affairs looked less and less productive of 
diamond necklaces, etc., her hatred against the new regime 
which had deprived her of those things naturally knew 
no bounds, and henceforth her one hope was a foreign in- 
vasion, which would quench the Revolution in the blood 
of France, and place the French people once more in her 
power. As for poor, feeble, foolish Louis, he was com- 
pletely in the toils of this noxious reptile.^ Many who 
looked on at the tumbril conveying her to execution must 
have been inclined to think that the guillotine was too 
good for the foul Autrichienne. 

She was not without a certain histrionic ability, and 
when before the tribunal played out her " queenly figure " 
in a manner which showed that she might have gained 
an honest living in transpontine melodrama. Much in- 
dignation has been expended on the charge of misconduct 
towards her son, the little dauphin, which Hebert brought 
against her. It is sufficient here to state that there are 
extant documents which show that the charge was not 
made without very good grounds, although in the nature 
of things it could not be certainly proved. The fact is, 
it is a mistake to apply the ordinary canons of maternity 

*The real characte? of Marie Antoinette, anart from the lies of Royalist historians, 
may be seen from her correspondence with Maria Theresa, and of the latter with the 
Comte Mercy D'Argenteau A good digest of it is given in M. Georges Avenel's 
Essay, La Vraie Marie Atttoinette. 



7^ THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

to a creature like Marie Antoinette. She was altogether 
an obscene abortion of the corrupt court-life of the i8th 
century, the like of which, let us hope, may never be seen 
again. 

Apropos of the dauphin, it is necessary to caution our 
readers against the lies of the reaction anent his treat- 
ment, and especially the foul calumnies against the young 
shoemaker, Simon, in whose care he was placed. All the 
contemporary evidence goes to show that the poor child 
received every consideration and kindness, but that hav- 
ing inherited a scrofulous or syphilitic constitution from 
both parents, which was further weakened in ways un- 
necessary to go into, it was impossible to rear him, that in 
spite of every care he died in the Temple the following 
year. 

On the 24th of October the twenty-two Girondists were 
brought to trial. They were convicted after five days' 
proceedings, and guillotined on the sixth. Valaze, one 
of their number, stabbed himself to death with a dagger 
on hearing the sentence, but his body was nevertheless 
sent to be guillotined with the rest. They embraced each 
other on arriving at the Place de la Revolution, and died 
singing the Marseillaise. Proofs of their complicity in 
the insurrection of the departments were complete. They 
had played for high stakes and lost. Seventy-three other 
Girondist deputies had been for some time under lock 
and key, having been compromised in some papers found 
at the house of a deputy whom Charlotte Corday had 
visited on her first arrival in Paris. With the execution 
of the twenty-two, however, Girondism, as a distinct 
party, finally disappears from history. The Girondins, 
it may here be mentioned, were largely under the in- 
fluence of Voltaire, just as the Mountain as a party was 
chiefly under the influence of Rousseau. 

Meanwhile Lyons, the last stronghold of Royalism and 
Girondism had fallen, and Toulon had been recovered 
from the English, to whom it had been surrendered. 



THE TERROR 79 

Both towns were visited with a fearful vengeance. Col- 
lot d'Herbois, who was a member both of the Commune 
and of the Committee of Public Safety, acting in con- 
junction with Couthon, the disciple of Robespierre, or- 
dered wholesale massacres of the inhabitants of the 
former city in his capacity of Commissioner. Billaud- 
Varennes, a colleague of CoUot's, was also a leading agent 
of the Terror. Lebon worked the guillotine at Arras. 
Freron, the Dantonist, made his holocausts at Marseilles 
and Toulouse and Tallien at Bordeaux. At Nantes, Car- 
rier, another Commissioner, inaugurated his horrible 
Noyades, or drownings, in which those suspected of Roy- 
alism or Moderatism were placed in boats with false bot- 
toms and drowned in the Loire. In some of these cases 
a man and woman were tied together naked. This was 
called " Republican marriage." The Revolutionary 
Commissioners or Pro-Consuls in some cases traveled 
from town to town carrying a guillotine with them. All 
these things were very infamous, it will be said, and so 
they were. But they were not any worse, if so bad, as 
the acts of more than one respectable government in '48, 
of the Czar in Poland in '63, or of the Versaillists in Paris 
in '71, events which the middle classes have complacently 
swallowed without indignation! 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS 

After the loth of August and the events that arose out 
of it of which he was the heart and soul, Danton had 
proved something of a failure. His peace negotiations 
with England had led to nothing, his attempts at recon- 
ciliation between Mountain and Gironde had likewise 
proved abortive; he had played no important part since 
the 2d of June in the Convention itself, and finally re- 
tired with his young wife for some weeks in disgust to his 
native town of Arcis sur Aube, whence he returned some 
time after to join his friend Camille Desmoulins in at- 
tacking the system of the Terror. It should be explained 
that the Cordeliers' Club, of which Danton had formerly 
been the head, had been reconstituted some time since, and 
was now entirely composed of Hebertists. Camille, at 
the beginning of December, started a new journal called 
" The Old Cordelier," which attacked the Terrorists, and 
especially the Commune, with bitter sarcasm. At first 
Robespierre approved of the sentiments there expressed, 
and even looked over and corrected the proofs of the first 
numbers. It pleased him that the Hebertists were 
sharply attacked. For the pedantic Rousseauite prig 
Robespierre was mortally offended with the atheism of 
the party of the Commune, and had recently been deliv- 
ering violent harangues against the worship of Reason, 
at the Jacobins' Club. Robespierre, who was ambitious 
of being the Washington of France, and had set his mind 
upon getting himself recognized by the powers, wished 
to pose before them as the moderate man opposed to ex- 
cesses of every description, and thereby to win them over. 

So 




JACQUES RENE HEBERT 



THE FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS 8i 

There was also an old-standing jealousy on the part of the 
Committee of Public Safety with the Commune on ac- 
count of the influence the latter wielded with the aid of 
its " revolutionary army." Nevertheless, Robespierre's 
two colleagues on the committee, Billaud Varennes and 
Collot D'Herbois, were enraged at the idea of even mit- 
igating the " Terror," and the notion found but little sup- 
port generally. Robespierre, whose influence was now 
immense, became suddenly alarmed lest he should be 
taxed with moderation, and hence a coolness sprang up 
between him and his friend Camille and the other Dan- 
tonists. 

Meanwhile the guillotine was working steadily every 
day, and some noteworthy heads were falling or had lately 
fallen. Among them we may notice Philippe d'Orleans 
Egalite, the ex-member of the Mountain and the king's 
cousin, arrested at the time Dumouriez's intrigues with 
his son became known, and decreed accused along with 
the Girondins, but not convicted till later. In November, 
Madame Roland was also put on her trial. She was con- 
demned, and went to the Place de la Revolution by the 
side of a poor printer, whom she endeavored to console. 
Arrived there, she asked for paper and ink to write down 
" the strange thoughts that were arising within her." 
Madame Roland was a remarkable woman, but even apart 
from her politics, one is repelled by her perpetual ped- 
antry and posing, and still more by her venomous hatred 
and malignant calumnies against her opponents. She 
was an intrigueuse of the first rank, and practically led 
the tactics of the Girondist party. 

Bailly, the first mayor of Paris under the new regime, 
he of the red flag of the Champ de Mars, in July, 1791, 
was one of the executed. Barnard, the Constitutionalist 
leader in the Constituent Assembly, also suffered. The 
corpse of the Girondist, Petion, who succeeded Bailly in 
the mayoralty of Paris, was found about this time in a 
wood near St. Emilion, partly devoured by wolves. The 



83 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

heads of ex-ministers and generals were falling by the 
score. 

But to return to the contest of parties in the govern- 
ment. Put in a few words, the matter stood as follows: 
on one side were the Hebertists, representing the Com- 
mune and the Terror; on the opposite were the Dan- 
tonists, representing to a large extent the Convention 
party, and hostile now to both the Commune and the 
Terror, wishing to see the Constitution established and 
the Convention all powerful. Between the two were 
the committees, that of " public safety " being the domi- 
nant one. The committee-men were mostly hostile to the 
power of the Commune, which stood in their way, but 
were determined to maintain the system of the Terror, 
and not to let the Convention override their authority. 

Robespierre, after some hesitation, ranged himself on 
the side of his committee alike against the Dantonists, 
with whom he had, up till now, been friendly, and the 
Hebertists, to whom he had been always more or less 
hostile. The struggle lasted between three and four 
months, and many were the stormy meetings of Jacobins, 
Cordeliers, and " sections," anent this death-drama be- 
tween the Sansculottes, the Dantonists, and the commit- 
tee-men. Since the reconstitution of the Committee of 
Public Safety in July, when Billaud and Collott came into 
it, the Dantonists had had no influence on either of the 
committees. The attack on the Hebertists was begun 
by the suppression of the revolutionary armies in the 
provinces, and a decree forbidding the sending of agents 
into the provinces by the Commune, and this was followed 
up inside and outside the Convention by concerted at- 
tacks on every action of the Commune from the Danton- 
ists, the Mountain, and from the Committees. The Ja- 
cobins' Club continued to be the battle-ground between 
Robespierre and the Hebertists. There Robespierre 
thundered nightly against atheistic intolerance, said that 
Atheism was aristocratic, on the ground that certain aris- 



THE FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS 83 

tocrats had been Atheists, omitting to recognize the fact 
that they wished to retain Atheism and Freethought as an 
exclusive privilege of their class. He maundered about 
the necessity of a Supreme Being as the avenger of in- 
jured innocence, and much more of a similar kind. 

At last the compact between Robespierre and his fel- 
low-committeemen, Billaud and Collot, was struck. 
They were to surrender their old friends the Hebertists, 
while he was to surrender the Dantonists. A projected 
insurrection inaugurated by the " section " called " Ma- 
rat," in favor of the Hebertists, miscarried, owing to the 
failure to take action at the right moment. Accordingly 
Hebert, Ronsin, Vincent, Clootz, Momoro, and others, al- 
ready expelled from the Jacobins' Club, were arrested, 
and after a mock trial, in which they were accused of 
taking money from the English Government to discredit 
the Republic by their excesses, were, on 24th March, 
1794, sent to the guillotine. Poor Chaumette's turn came 
a few days later. 

A week afterwards Danton, who had come back to 
Paris at the earnest solicitation of his friends, and had 
sought ineffectually to compromise matters with Robes- 
pierre, was sent before the revolutionary tribunal. This 
was Robespierre's great coup. Danton's personality, 
combined with his oratory, was nearly securing his ac- 
quittal, when Robespierre got a special law hurried 
through the Convention, which closed his mouth, and he, 
too, went his way in company with his friends Camilla 
Desmoulins, Phillipeaux, Herault De Sechelles, and 
others, to the Place de la Revolution. Thus was the 
Revolution, indeed, like Saturn, devouring its own chil- 
dren. 

When we first came across Robespierre, he was, al- 
though a prig, and a repulsive prig at that, apparently 
actuated by as much honesty of purpose as any other 
leader. His services to the Revolution at all the great 
crises were real. But the germ of ambition and personal 



§4 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

self-seeking, which was always observable, grew with 
the progress of events, until, at the period we have now 
reached, he had developed into a monster, actuated by one 
aim — to become dictator, and prepared to make any sac- 
rifice whatever for the accomplishment of that aim. The 
murder of friends like Danton and Desmoulins, with 
whom he had lived and worked on terms of close intimacy 
since the beginning of the Revolution, yields to nothing in 
history for its treachery and infamy. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE RULE OF ROBESPIERRE 

ii 

The old Commune was now overthrown, and all inde- 
pendence stifled in the Convention. No initiative re- 
mained but that of the Committee of Public Safety, and 
in the Committee itself little, at least in internal affairs, 
but that of Maximilian Robespierre and his partisans. 
The chief among the latter were Couthon and Lebas in 
Paris, and St. Just and Lebon as Commissioners in th^ 
provinces. The municipality, now that most of the old 
members were guillotined or expelled, was filled up with 
subordinate creatures of Robespierre. A Belgian archi- 
tect, named Fleuriot-Lescot, replaced the devoted and 
noble-minded Pache as mayor of Paris. The same thing 
went on all round. The Cordeliers' Club was suppressed. 
Robespierre had succeeded in reducing the Jacobins' Club 
to a mere claque of his own. The Convention was not 
much better. A look from the " Incorruptible " (as 
Robespierre was called) sufficed to frown down all op- 
position. 

The increase of the Terror now became frightful all 
over France, but especially in Paris. Robespierre himself 
directed the police department. On the 226. of Prairial 
(the loth of June), an atrocious law was passed at the 
instigation of the dictator, whereby persons sent before 
the revolutionary tribunal, now divided into four sections, 
were refused the right of defence. This meant, of course, 
that whereas before about a third of those accused were 
acquitted, henceforth all prisoners were condemned, when 
nothing else could be alleged against them, on the general 
and vague charge of " conspiracies in the prisons." Men 

85 



86 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

and women were now tried by the public prosecutor, Fou- 
quier Tinville, and the judges of the Tribunal, in batches 
of fifty or sixty at once. It would be a mistake to sup- 
pose that it was chiefly the well-to-do that suffered. On 
the contrary, out of 2,750 victims of Robespierre's, only 
650 belonged to the upper or middle classes. The tum- 
brils that wended their way daily to the Place de la Revo- 
lution and afterwards to the Faubourg St. Antoine, were 
largely filled with workingmen. During the last three 
weeks of the tyrant's rule, 1,125 persons were executed 
in Paris alone. Thus did this criminal monster drown 
the Revolution itself in the blood of his victims. Marat 
had already foreseen the results of Robespierre's self-idol- 
atry, when during a speech of the latter in the Conven- 
tion, he whispered to his neighbor, Dubois-Crance, — 
" With such doctrines as that, he will do more harm than 
all the tyrants put together." 

The notion of becoming the high-priest of a new re- 
ligion had been working in Robespierre's mind ever since 
the fall of the Hebertists. After many speeches in the 
Jacobins' Club, on the i8th of May, Maximilian at last 
mounted the Convention tribune to demand that it be de- 
creed that " the French people recognizes the existence 
of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul," and 
that a festival should be held in honor of the said Being. 
In his speech he dwelt on the distinction between a pure 
Deism and the superstitious cults of priests, said that it 
mattered not whether the existence of God were demon- 
strable or even probable, that " in the eyes of the legisla- 
tor all is truth which is useful in the world and in prac- 
tice," that a god was an indispensable article of state-fur- 
niture, and much more to the same effect. Deputations 
from the new Robespierrized Commune, from the Jaco- 
bins, and from the sections next filed in with the petition 
that the Convention should vouchsafe to grant them a 
God and Immortality. The resolution was carried amid 
thunders of applause in the same Convention which six 



THE RULE OF ROBESPIERRE 87 

months previously had applauded the atheistic worship of 
Reason. 

A few days afterwards, one undoubted, and another 
more questionable, attempt at assassination was made. 
The first on Collot D'Herbois, on the steps of his house ; 
and the second on Robespierre himself by a young woman 
named Cecilie Renault. Robespierre was out when she 
called, but she was arrested, and knives were found in her 
possession. She was guillotined, together with all her 
family. Fifty-four persons, dressed in red smocks, were 
involved in this execution, which took place in the Fau- 
bourg St. Antoine, the great workmen's quarter. 

At last the eventful day, the 20th of Prairial (8th of 
June), fixed for the glorification of the Supreme Being, 
arrived. The Convention, the Jacobins, and Sections in 
gala attire, might have been seen wending their way, in 
splendid summer weather, through the Tiiileries' Gardens, 
the procession headed by Robespierre, radiant in sky-blue 
coat and black breeches, bearing in his hand an enormous 
bunch of corn, fruits, and flowers, a classical touch sug- 
gested by the pagan functions of antiquity. Arrived at 
an improvised altar, on the top of which were allegorical 
figures intended to represent Atheism, Anarchy, etc., 
Robespierre proceeded to set fire to the latter with a 
torch. They blazed away, and presently by a triumph 
of mechanical art the Supreme Being himself emerged 
from their ashes, rather the worse for smoke, it is said. 
The " Incorruptible " made three harangues, but the 
hopes of those who expected an announcement of a cessa- 
tion of the Terror were damped when he proclaimed : 
" To-day let us enjoy ourselves, to-morrow begin afresh 
to fight the enemies of the Revolution." All knew what 
this meant, and two days later the monstrous law before 
spoken of was passed, and the Terror entered upon its 
last and acutest stage. 

This disappointment of the public hopes was the be- 
ginning of the fall of Robespierre's popularity outside the 



^^ THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

governing bodies. Suppressed hatred and jealousy of 
him had long been the growing feeling in the Conven- 
tion, while on the Committee of Public Safety he had 
become at loggerheads with all except his own henchmen. 
The law of Prairial was the last occasion that the Com- 
mittee appeared united before the Convention. Fouquier 
Tinville, the public prosecutor, went to the Committee 
himself to complain of the new law as being the reductio 
ad absurdum of the Terror, and was told that it had been 
yielded under protest to Robespierre's importunity. So 
strained were the relations, that Robespierre henceforth 
rarely attended the sittings of the Committee, and ap- 
peared comparatively seldom in the Convention itself, 
leaving everything to Couthon, St. Just, and Lebas. On 
the other hand, he was assiduous in his attendance at the 
Jacobins'. He never went out of doors, indeed, now, 
without an escort of Jacobins armed with bludgeons. An 
incident occurred about this time which was dexterously 
used by his enemies to throw ridicule upon the high-priest 
and would-be dictator. A crazy woman named Catherine 
Theot, calling herself the Mother of God, proclaimed the 
advent of a Messiah, and in conjunction with an ex-priest 
set up a kind of free-masonic society. Barere, the dex- 
terous trimmer, drew up a clever report on the subject, in 
which he hinted at Robespierre's desiring to profit by the 
proceedings of the fanatics without naming him. Bil- 
laud, Collot, and the members of the " Committee of Gen- 
eral Safety," who had been attached to the old Commune, 
and were partisans of the Worship of Reason, had taken 
offence at the cultus of the Supreme Being. " You and 
your Supreme Being," Billaud was heard to say in a 
stage-aside on the occasion, " are beginning to bore me." 
It was now, therefore, a case of " aut Caesar aut nullus," 
with Robespierre. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE THERMIDOR 

It had become a matter of life and death to Robespierre 
to overthrow the hostile members of the committees and 
get himself recognized as a dictator. St. Just tried it on 
behalf of his friend several times with the " Public Safe- 
ty," but without effect. St. Just, by the way, was prob- 
ably the most sincere and enthusiastic of all the followers 
of Robespierre. Not yet twenty-five years of age, he 
had made a great mark on the Revolution. His large, 
poetic eyes, his tall and dignified figure, his long dark 
hair, had obtained for him the nickname of the " apoca- 
lyptic." It was necessary to take action without delay. 
The whole of the Committee of General Security and the 
majority of the Committee of Public Safety were against 
Robespierre. The Convention therefore had to be tried, 
and failing the Convention an insurrection proclaimed, 
headed by the Jacobins and the Commune. The latter 
bodies were prepared some time beforehand to resort 
to force if necessary to the ends of their champion, and 
a conspiracy was actually formed, the leaders of which 
were St. Just, Couthon, who, together with Robespierre, 
constituted the so-called triumvirate, the Mayor Fleuriot, 
the *' national agent " Payan, Dumas, the president, and 
Coffinhal, the vice-president of the Revolutionary Tribu- 
nal. St. Just had been recalled in great haste by Robes- 
pierre from his mission with the army of the North, and 
when apprised of the state of affairs he advised an 
immediate coup d'etat. This, however, was impractic- 
able. The Convention had to be sounded first, otherwise 
the pretext for rising was wanting. Accordingly, early 

89 



9«> THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

on the 26th of July (8th of Thermidor) Robespierre re- 
paired to the Assembly and opened the sitting with a long 
and dexterous speech, denouncing the Committees and de- 
fending himself in the name of the national sovereignty. 
He wound up by recommending a general " purification " 
all round of the Committees and of the Convention. 

Robespierre sat down amid absolute silence. Not a 
sound or word of applause greeted his challenge. Pres- 
ently, a member, Lecointre, rose and moved the printing 
and circulation of the harangue. This was at once vig- 
orously resisted, but was eventually carried. 

The members of the two Committees, hitherto silent, 
now took up the challenge. They attacked Robespierre 
in turn. The upshot was that the decree for the printing 
and circulation of the discourse was virtually rescinded, 
being referred to the Committee for examination. Robes- 
pierre, surprised at the unwonted resistance, left the sit- 
ting discouraged, but without despairing of the situation. 

In the evening he repaired to the Jacobins', when he 
re-read the discourse of the morning, and here it was, 
of course, greeted with tumultuous applause. The Com- 
mittees, on their side, kept together all night. Nothing 
was omitted during these momentous hours by either 
party to ensure victory on the morrow. The Committees 
and the Mountain negotiated successfully with the Plain 
to bring about common action in the Assembly. Before 
noon the following day, July 27th (9th Thermidor), 
members were to be seen encouraging each other in the 
corridors. The sitting was opened by St. Just. He had 
scarcely begun his speech, attacking the Committees, 
when he was interrupted and denounced by the ex-com- 
missioner Tallien, who demanded that "the veil should 
be withdrawn from the conspiracy." Tallien was sup- 
ported on all sides. Billaud Varennes then spoke of 
" packed " meetings of Jacobins, of threats against the 
representatives, etc. At this point of Billaud's speech the 
whole Convention rose and swore to defend the national 



THE THERMIDOR 9^ 

sovereignty amid the applause of the public in the gal- 
leries. All eyes were now turned towards Robespieri-e, 
who finally made a dash at the tribune. Before he could 
speak, however, the cry of " Down with the tyrant ! " 
resounded throughout the hall. 

Tallien, in an uncompromising speech, then demanded 
the arrest of Henriot, the commander of the reconstituted 
armed force of Paris, Billaud, the arrest of other par- 
tisans of Robespierre, measures which were at once ac- 
ceded to. 

Robespierre repeatedly attempted to defend himself, 
but his voice was always drowned with shouts of " Down 
with the tyrant ! " and by the ringing of the President's 
bell. He turned to the " Plain," he turned to the public 
in the galleries, there was no response from either. 
Finally he sank down on a seat, exhausted, and foaming 
at the mouth. 

" The blood of Danton chokes the wretch," cried a 
member of the Mountain. 

Robespierre's arrest was demanded on all sides. His 
brother, Augustin Robespierre, Couthon, Lebas and St. 
Just all claimed to share his fate, and were finally all 
given into the hands of the gendarmerie. The moment 
this became known at the Hotel de Ville, where the 
Mayor, Payan, and Henriot were assembled with the 
Commune, orders were given for the barriers to be 
closed, the sections assembled, the tocsin sounded, the 
generate beaten, and the insurrection proclaimed. The 
cannoneers were ordered to repair to the Place de Greve 
by the Hotel de Ville, and the Revolutionary Committees 
were sent for to take the oath of insurrection. The ar- 
rested deputies had meanwhile been released by their par- 
tisans, on their way to the prisons, and brought in triumph 
to the Hotel de Ville. 

The Jacobins, who declared themselves in permanent 
session, formed a subordinate center of insurrection. 
Henriot, who then rushed through the streets, pistol in 



92 IHE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

hand, calling on the people to rise, was seized by two 
deputies, and was being brought to the Committees, when 
he was liberated by Coffinhal, at the head of two hundred 
cannoneers, of whom Henriot himself at once took the 
command, placing them in position round the Convention. 

The Assembly, which had adjourned for a couple of 
hours, had now reassembled. It was seven o'clock. 
" Citizens," said the President, " now is the time for us 
to die at our post." Affairs did certainly look hopeless 
for the Convention. Orders were almost immediately 
given by Henriot to fire, when, strange to say, the can- 
noneers who, up to this time, had been with the insur- 
gents, hesitated, wavered, and finally refused to comply. 
In the hands of those two hundred cannoneers lay the 
fate of France. Henriot hurried off to the Hotel de 
Ville. It was now the turn of the Convention to take 
the aggressive. The response of the sections to the call 
of the Commune was not altogether satisfactory. The 
fact is, the movement of the last two days had been sud- 
den even for Paris, and had developed out of a quarrel 
inside the government, with which the general public 
were imperfectly acquainted. Besides this, Robespierre's 
unpopularity had now become general. Though the sec- 
tions assembled at nine o'clock, they confined themselves 
to sending messages to the Commune, asking for further 
information. 

While the assembled sections were discussing the mat- 
ter in the various wards of the city, delegates from the 
Convention arrived apprising them of the real position of 
affairs. They now no longer hesitated, but arming them- 
selves, immediately proceeded, not to the Place de Greve, 
but to the Tuileries, where they were naturally received 
with great enthusiasm. A small body, with a few pieces 
of artillery, having been left as a guard to the Conven- 
tion, the remainder then marched off to attack the head 
center of the insurrection — the Hotel de Ville. The 
crowds which had assembled outside at the sound of the 



THE THERMIDOR 93 

tocsin had gradually dispersed, finding the sections did 
not arrive, and the space was now much thinned. Emis- 
saries from the Convention proclaimed the outlawry of 
the insurgents, upon which all that remained went home. 

The armed sections now arrived from the Tuileries, 
occupied all the outlets, and set up a prolonged shout of 
" Long live the Convention ! " The insurgents saw at 
once that all was lost. Robespierre shot himself, but 
only succeeded in breaking his jaw. His brother threw 
himself from the third story. Lebas killed himself with 
a pistol. Couthon mangled himself with a knife. Cof- 
finhal pitched Henriot from the window into the common 
sewer and managed to escape. St. Just alone awaited his 
fate with dignity and calmness. 

It was now about one o'clock in the morning. The 
conspirators were conducted first to the Committee of 
General Security. Robespierre lay on a litter suffering 
horribly, exposed to the jeers and taunts of the by- 
standers, who upbraided him with all his crimes. They 
were afterwards taken to the prison of the Conciergerie, 
and brought up thence the next day before the Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal, with others of their associates. They 
were, of course, condemned, and were executed the same 
evening at six o'clock. Immense crowds, hooting and 
jeering, thronged the streets to see the tumbrils as they 
passed. Uncomplimentary references to the Supreme 
Being and to the prospective immortality of Robes- 
pierre's soul were not wanting. A halt was made before 
the house where Robespierre had lodged. All eyes were 
turned on him in his " Supreme Being " blue coat, and 
the jeers and invectives grew louder. The sullen hatred 
which had been growing for weeks past suddenly found 
vent. At the time of his fall he probably had scarcely two 
or three hundred real followers in all Paris. 

Instead of mitigating or abolishing the Terror at the 
moment, when, the danger of invasion being past, it had 
no longer any solid backing in public opinion, he had 



94 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

chosen to exacerbate it, only too obviously for his own 
amhitious purposes. Thus he speedily degenerated from 
the most popular to the most hated man in all France. 
The battle of Fleurus on the 26th of June had secured 
for France the re-conquest of Belgium, and destroyed the 
last remaining chance of foreign invasion ; and hence, all 
but the blind followers of the system were determined to 
be rid of the Terror, the national extremity which gave 
rise to it having passed away. 

Robespierre was the last to ascend the scaffold. As 
Samson the executioner wrenched off the bloody linen 
which bound up his jaw, a horrible yell escaped him. 
This was the only sign of life since his arrest. The 
moment his head fell, a roar of applause, which lasted 
some minutes, resounded far and wide on the evening air. 
Such was the celebrated Revolution of " Thermidor." 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE REACTION BEGINS 

It is plain to us now that the fall of Robespierre meant 
the end of the Terror, although the partisans of the sys- 
tem on the Committees could not see it. The Billaud 
Varennes, CoUot D'Herbois, and Bareres thought still to 
carry on the proscriptions with the other methods of 
revolutionary government. They lost influence every 
day. The Terror was at once abolished, except for the 
** tail " of Robespierre, the members of the Commune, 
some of the leading Robespierrists, Jacobins, etc., who 
were guillotined to the number of some hundred and fifty 
in a few days. In the relief which " Sansculottes " like 
the rest felt at being rid of the perpetual Damocles' sword 
of Tinville, and of the endless rant about " virtue," " aus- 
terity," " incorruptibility," with which Robespierre and 
his crew had sickened every one, they little thought that 
the end of the Revolution itself, in so far as it interested 
the working classes of France, was at hand. In truth, 
the reaction had begun four months before, with the de- 
struction of the party of the old Commune — the Heber- 
tists. When a Revolution proceeds to exterminate its 
most enthusiastic adherents its fate is obviously sealed. 
Robespierre had denounced the Hebertists as Atheists and 
Communists. To the Inventor of the " Supreme Being " 
and the *' Declaration of Rights," which was foisted upon 
the Jacobins in opposition to Chaumette and Hebert, and 
according to which " the right of property is the right 
of every citizen to enjoy and dispose as he pleases of his 
goods," which provided also that " no commerce should 
be prohibited," and no property ever confiscated even for 

95 



9^ THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

public purposes ** without indemnity " — to such a one 
the Hebertists were offensive without doubt. 

What Robespierre desired was, in short, a RepubHc of 
starched, middle-class prigs, of which he himself was 
to be the type. The Hebertists, especially men like* 
Chaumette and Anacharsis Clootz, whatever their faults 
may have been, at least desired a change better worth 
fighting for than this. Their instincts were Socialistic 
though their ideas may have been vague, as they could 
scarcely fail to have been a century ago, when the " great 
industry " had hardly begun. As to the Terror, Robes- 
pierre substituted for the irregular methods of the Com- 
mune a systematic plan of butchery, which enabled him 
to rid himself conveniently of personal enemies. Still, 
even Robespierre, in spite of their contradicting the free 
trade principles he had laid down, did not dare to suggest 
abolishing the maximum and other measures passed under 
the influence of the Commune for ensuring a possible 
livelihood to the working classes. This it was reserved 
for the Thermidorians to do. 

The Committee-men had accepted the aid of the Con- 
vention in overthrowing Robespierre and his party. 
They soon found that the Convention was as determined 
to rid itself of the dictatorship of the Committees as the 
Committees themselves had been that of Robespierre. 
The very next day the Committees began to be attacked. 
The abolition of the Revolutionary Tribunal was pro- 
posed. Barere, who spoke in its support, was taunted 
with having been a Constitutional Royalist before the 
loth of August. The Convention, nevertheless, confined 
itself this time to issuing a decree of accusation against 
Fouquier Tinville and abolishing the law of Prairial. 

The Committees themselves were next reorganized and 
their power curtailed. The Paris Commune never again 
rose after its second defeat under Robespierre. The old 
suspects were gradually released from prison. But the 
reaction did not stop at abolishing the Terror. It began 




'-V'"*V-'*-i 



MAXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE 



THE REACTION BEGINS 97 

at once undoing all the " sansculottic " work of the Rev- 
olution. First, the daily meetings of the sections were 
reduced to one in ten days. Next, the allowance of 
twenty sous a day for indigent members was done away 
with. Next, the maximum was abolished. The commis- 
sioners Lebon and Carrier (the author of the noyades at 
Nantes) were now tried. Most of the old members of 
the Committees shortly after this either resigned or were 
ousted, and their places were filled with Thermidorians. 

Freron, the ex-Mountainist and now Reactionist, started 
a paper in which he proposed that the youth of the 
upper and middle classes should arm themselves with 
loaded sticks to resist the Sansculottes. The suggestion 
was eagerly adopted, and a new and fantastic dress was 
assumed as a counterblast to the Carmagnole costume of 
the popular party. An open-breasted front, long hair, 
done up behind in tresses, called cadenettes, and low 
shoes, formed the costume a la victime of the Jeunesse 
doree (gilded youth), as they were called. Every day 
street fights took place between them and the Jacobins. 
The latter, though they had undergone one of their cus- 
tomary purifications after the fall of Robespierre, and 
had duly sent a deputation congratulating the Convention 
on the death of " the tyrant," found themselves daily get- 
ting into worse odor with the dominant party. 

The Convention before long broke up the vast federa- 
tion of clubs of which the Paris Jacobins were the head 
by arbitrarily forbidding any further correspondence be- 
tween the center and the provincial branches. The As- 
sembly, at the same time, declined to receive any further 
deputations. Nevertheless the club was still the rallying 
point of every revolutionary influence in Paris. An at- 
tempt was made to liberate Carrier, which, although un- 
successful, gave rise to a formidable disturbance, and 
led to the suspension of the Jacobin sittings by the Con- 
vention. The members assembled the next day notwith- 
standing, in defiance of the decree, but the meeting-place 



9^ THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

was attacked by the " gilded youth," and the Jacobins 
driven out. The Convention thereupon suppressed the 
club altogether (November 12). 

The Thermidorian party at first wanted a revolutionary 
reputation to counterbalance that of Robespierre, and 
chose Marat, who, owing to the jealousy of the former, 
had not as yet received the honors of the Pantheon, which 
the Convention had granted after his death. But it was 
not long before the reputation of Marat, like everything 
else belonging to the Proletarian side of the Revolution, 
fell under the ban of the reactionary party, his busts were 
everywhere destroyed, and his name became the byword 
it has been ever since, or at least until quite recently. 

The decree of expulsion against the nobles and priests 
was now rescinded. The seventy-three members who 
had protested against the expulsion of the Girondins were 
released from prison and reinstated in their places in the 
Convention. The monument in front of the " Invalides," 
celebrating the victory of the Mountain over the Gironde, 
was destroyed. Soon after this the few remaining Giron- 
dist leaders who had come out of hiding were received 
back into the Convention, thus further strengthening the 
great " moderate party " which had formed out of the 
wreckage of various parties. In January, 1795, the 
churches were again opened for Christian worship, 
though here some caution was observed, a good many 
restrictions on religious propagandism being still main- 
tained. The armies were now supplied solely by con- 
tract and not partially by requisitions on private property 
as heretofore. The confiscated goods of suspects and of 
those executed during the Terror were restored in the 
first instance to themselves, in the second to their nearest 
relations. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE REACTION PROGRESSES 

The reaction was daily growing in intensity. The 
fury of the new " White Terror " in Paris had reached 
other leaders than Carrier and Lebon, both of whom had 
been guillotined. These other leaders were our old 
friends Billaud Varennes, Collot D'Herbois and Barere, 
together with another committee-man, Vadier. A dem- 
onstration in their favor, organized by the workmen's 
faubourgs of St. Antoine and St. Marceau, availed noth- 
ing. On 2 1 St March (ist Germinal) they were brought 
before the Convention, and the proceedings lasted nine 
days. 

Though gallantly defended by the wreck of the Moun- 
tain, they were like to be condemned, when once more 
the loyal workmen's quarters made an attempt to rescue 
them, and stormed the Convention to the cry of " Bread, 
the Constitution of '93, and the Liberty of the Patriots ! " 
This, too, proved abortive. Yet possibly fear of popular 
resentment prevented the Convention from passing a 
capital sentence this time. It confined itself to condemn- 
ing the accused to transportation to Cayenne, where Col- 
lot took the yellow fever, drank off a whole bottle of 
brandy and died ; and Billaud amused himself with 
breeding negroes and tame parrots. 

The turn of Fouquier Tinville and the jurymen of the 
Revolutionary Tribunal came next. They were con- 
demned and executed early in May. " Where are now 
thy batches?*' mockingly exclaimed some of the crowd, 
as Fouquier mounted the scaffold. " Wretched canaille'* 
replied he, '' is your bread any the cheaper for not having 



100 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

them ? '' In truth, the economic situation was fearful. 
The abolition of the maximum and the forced currency 
produced a terrific crisis. The value of 5,000 francs in 
paper (assignats) sank to 20 francs in silver or gold. 
Forestalling, swindling and extortion of every kind had 
a high time of it. Never before had starvation claimed so 
many victims as now. Death by the guillotine was suc- 
ceeded by death from hunger. The crowds at the bakers' 
doors were worse than even before the Revolution. Bit- 
terly did St. Antoine and St. Marceau look back on the 
time when, under the Commune and the Committees, 
they had a sufficiency and power. 

The last of the popular insurrections (unless we in- 
clude the abortive Baboeuf conspiracy as one) took place 
on the 20th May (ist Prairial) of this year, 1795 (iii), 
and was a well-organized and determined movement, but 
lacked leaders and staying power, and consequently fell 
through. The chief demands were still " Bread, the Con- 
stitution of '93, the release of all imprisoned patriots ! " 
The faubourgs this time marched fully armed upon the 
Convention, which was taken by surprise, the daily recur- 
ring disturbances having hidden from it the fact that an 
organized insurrection was brewing. The doors were 
forced, and the Sansculottes rushed in. At first re- 
pulsed, they returned in greater numbers. They fired 
at the president, Boissy D'Anglas. A deputy, Feraud, 
who rushed forward to protect him, was cut down by 
sabres, and his head fixed on a pike. All the deputies 
now fled, except those forming the rump of the old 
Mountain, to the number of about sixty. Romme (he 
of the calendar) now took the chair, and all the demands 
of the insurgents were put and carried in rapid succes- 
sion. 

But the wealthy " sections " had been apprised of what 
had happened and had meantime quietly surrounded the 
Tuileries. Finally, a drilled body of Jeunesse doree sud- 
denly burst in, and drove out the insurgents in confusion 



THE REACTION PROGRESSES loi 

at the point of the bayonet. The deputies reentered. 
All the decrees just passed were annulled. The mem- 
bers of the " Mountain " were arrested as accomplices 
of the insurgents, and secretly conveyed away from Paris. 
But the Sansculottes did not consider themselves beaten. 
Next day they again assembled in the outer faubourgs 
and proceeded to march on the Convention, this time tak- 
ing their cannon with them. The inner or wealthy mid- 
dle-class sections were also drawn up in arms on the 
Place du Carrousel in defence of the Assembly. The 
cannon of the faubourgs was already pointed on the 
Tuileries when the Convention sent commissioners to 
treat with the insurgents. There was a pretence of favor- 
ably receiving their demands, but nothing was def- 
initely promised. This sufficed, however, to put the 
Sansculottes off their guard. Not having an energetic 
Commune and a determined commander at their back, as 
on the 31st of May, 1793, they retired satisfied with some 
vague conciliatory phrases, a course proving fatal to the 
insurrection which, at the opening of the day, had stood 
a fair chance of success, and fatal also, as the event 
showed, to the cause of the democracy. 

A few days later the assassin of Feraud, who had been 
tried and condemned to death, was on his way to execu- 
tion when the populace delivered him and carried him 
in triumph into the faubourgs. The Convention then 
ordered the latter to be disarmed. The interior sections 
surrounded the working class quarters the next day for 
the purpose of carrying out this decree. After some 
resistance it was effected. The faubourgs surrendered 
unconditionally with their arms and cannon. 

The Paris working classes were now reduced, there- 
fore, to the condition of an unarmed mob, and for them 
organized insurrection was a thing of the past. Royalism 
became again fashionable. It was openly advocated in 
newspapers and in public assemblies, and even inside the 
Convention itself, though here it remained in a minority. 



102 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Meanwhile, the "White Terror" was raging in the 
provinces far worse than in Paris. The South, especially, 
became the scene of wholesale massacres of all supposed 
to be friendly to revolutionary principles. Bands of re- 
turned " emigrants " and wealthy young men called 
" Companies of Jesus " and '* Companies of the Sun," 
went about killing every Revolutionist, or suspected Rev- 
olutionist, they could find. The Jacobins had been ar- 
rested wholesale during the last few weeks. The prisons 
were broken into, and every Sansculotte massacred. At 
Lyons three hundred Jacobins were enclosed in a shed, 
which was then set fire to, a cordon being formed around 
it till they were consumed to a man. At Tarascon hun- 
dreds of victims were hurled from the top of a rock into 
the Rhone. This sort of thing went on for weeks without 
any attempt to stop it on the part of the authorities. The 
canting middle-class humbugs who have dilated on the 
" horrors of the French Revolution " and of the " mob " 
with so much unction, have prudentl}^ passed over the still 
worse horrors of the Reaction and the " respectable 
classes." It is noteworthy that many of the most ardent 
of the Thermidorian reactionaries were precisely men 
who, a few months previously, had been the most ardent 
revolutionists, and, in many cases, like Freron, Fouche, 
and Tallien, the most truculent agents of the " Terror." 
In Paris, encouraged by impunity, the Royalists at last 
attempted an insurrection against the Convention, find- 
ing that they were not likely to obtain a majority in that 
body. The immediate occasion of it was the conditions 
under which the Assembly was to be dissolved. The 
new Constitution which had been voted was very much 
on the model of that of 1791. A property qualification 
and indirect voting were, of course, re-introduced, with 
two Chambers, a Council of 500, and a Senate of 250 
members, capped by an Executive Committee or Direc- 
tory of five, having power to appoint six Ministers. The 
electoral divisions of France were reorganized in an anti^ 



THE REACTION PROGRESSES 103 

democratic sense. Now, with this constitution, the Roy- 
alists hoped to have obtained a majority in the next Par- 
Hament, and were grievously disappointed when the Con- 
vention enacted that two-thirds of the new body should 
be chosen from its own members. Hence the tears of the 
Royalists, and hence the insurrection of the wealthy and 
well-armed Royalist section against the Convention on 
the 5th October, 1795 (13th of Vendemiaire, III.), the 
task of quelling which was entrusted by Barras, the 
generalissimo of the Convention, to a young artillery 
officer. Napoleon Bonaparte by name, a task the said 
young artillery officer duly accomplished by the aid of 
well-planted cannon on the evening of the same day. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE BABCEUF CX>NSPIRACY AND END OF THE FRENCH REV- 
OLUTION 

The insurrection of Vendemiaire gave a slight check to 
the reaction which had, up to this time, gone on unim- 
peded. The majority of the Convention, much as they 
dreaded a return of real revolutionary government, were 
too much involved poHtically and economically in the 
Revolution to be able to tolerate a complete relapse to the 
old regime. What they desired was a plutocratic Re- 
public, in which money should take the place of privilege, 
and a wealthy middle class succeed to the power of the 
old noblesse and the crown. And the new Constitution, 
with its " council of five hundred," its " senate of an- 
cients," its " directorate," its property qualification, and 
its indirect suffrage, seemed admirably calculated to en- 
sure this end. On the 26th of October the National Con- 
vention proclaimed itself dissolved, after an existence of 
three years and a month, and the elections were held, 
and the Directory established shortly after. 

One result of the events of the 5th October (13th Ven- 
demiaire) was not unnaturally a greater toleration of 
the popular party, many of whom had taken up arms 
on the last-mentioned date against the common enemy, the 
Royalists. The democrats established a club for pur- 
poses of political discussion at the Pantheon, which was, 
for some time, unmolested by the new Government, vis.,. 
the Directory. The leader of the club was Gracchus 
Baboeuf, who obtained the title of " Tribune of the Peo- 
ple." He had occupied an obscure Government post dur- 

104 




FRANCOIS NOEL BABEUF 



END OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 105 

ing the Terror, but had not hitherto played any important 
part in the Revolution. 

The society at the Pantheon grew daily in numbers, 
and with it grew the influence of Baboeuf. The mem- 
bers at length ventured to repair to their meeting-place in 
arms, and whispers of a projected insurrection soon made 
themselves heard. The Directory thereupon became 
alarmed, and on the 26th of February, 1796 (8th Ventose, 
IV.), peremptorily closed the Pantheon and forbade any 
further meetings of the club. The followers of Baboeuf, 
among whom were the remnant of the old Commune and 
Committees, and of course all the old Jacobins, then re- 
sorted to direct conspiracy and managed to win over the 
" legion of police," but here again they were outwitted 
by the Directory, which immediately disarmed and dis- 
banded this body. The Baboeuvists (as they were called) 
now assembled secretly in a place they named the 
" Temple of Reason," and concerted measures for an or- 
ganized insurrection and attack on the governing bodies. 
They succeeded in rallying in a short time most of the 
revolutionary elements of France. 

It was now agreed to form a new Convention, of which 
the nucleus was to be such remnant of the old Mountain as 
death, proscription, and desertion had left. Armed bands 
were suddenly to march from several points concentrically 
upon the Directory and councils. The Baboeuvists be- 
lieved themselves sure of the military stationed at the 
Camp of Crenelle, and an officer named Grisel was in 
their confidence. Everything was arranged up to the 
night of the projected movement. Two placards were 
about to be posted up, one bearing the words, " Con- 
stitution of 1793, Liberty, Equality, and general happi- 
ness," the other the motto, " Those who usurp supreme 
power ought to be put to death by freemen," and the 
signal was agreed upon for action, when the chiefs were 
suddenly surprised and arrested in their council chamber 
(May loth). They had been betrayed by GriseL 



io6 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Baboeuf, while in prison, wrote to the directors suggest- 
ing a compromise. He was, nevertheless, with the other 
leaders sent before the new high court of Vendome. 

On the 7th of September following, while they were 
still awaiting their trial, their followers, to the number 
of some hundreds, made an armed attack on the Luxem- 
bourg, the palace of the directors, but were repulsed by 
the guards placed there for its defence. They then pro- 
ceeded to the camp of Crenelle, in the hope of raising 
the military, in which they were again unsuccessful, being 
met by a determined resistance. A sharp skirmish fol- 
lowed, ending in the complete rout of the insurgents, 
who left a large number of dead on the field. This was 
the last attempt of the democracy to recover its position. 

Almost all the leaders and organizers of the Baboeuf 
movement were executed by the sentence of military com- 
missions, and numbers of other persons were imprisoned 
and exiled. Babceuf himself, and Darthe, the late sec- 
retary of Lebon, after acquitting themselves during their 
trial in a manly manner, fully avowing their principles, 
stabbed themselves to death with daggers on hearing 
their sentence. The objects of Baboeuf and his followers 
were definitely and frankly communistic, which cannot 
be said of any other of the revolutionary parties. Ba- 
boeuf himself (who, by the side of Marat, Chaumette, 
Clootz and Pache, may be regarded as one of the no- 
blest and most disinterested of all the leaders of the time) 
if, in his theoretical scheme, he was the first of the Uto- 
pian Socialists, also forestalled in his notion of the neces- 
sity of taking possession of the political power, one of 
the foremost principles of the modern Socialist move- 
ment. 

With the final extinction of the party of Baboeuf in 
September, 1796, after which the French democracy 
never again rallied, the French Revolution, as a distinct 
event in history, may be considered to come to an end. 
From the meeting of the States-General in May, 1789, to 



END OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 107 

the date just mentioned, was only a little more than seven 
years, but what an experience France and Europe had 
passed through. Since Camille Desmoulins delivered his 
famous harangue in the Palais Royal Gardens on that 
July day in '89, when revolutionary ardor seemed so 
single in its purpose — how many parties had been con- 
sumed, how many enthusiasms had been burnt out! 

With the forlorn attempt of the Baboeuvists on Cre- 
nelle, revolutionary fervor gasped its last breath. The 
Bourgeois had conquered; the day of the Proletarian 
was not yet, in spite of his temporary accession to power 
during the great revolutionary years. 

The events succeeding the collapse of the Baboeuf 
movement may be signalized in a few sentences. The 
populace of Paris and the other large cities gradually 
settled down into a private life of toil and hardship, and 
an indifference to public affairs. The wealthy classes 
plunged into every form of speculation and extravagance. 
The new middle-class Republic became a^jparently every 
day more consolidated. It flourished at home under the 
director Barras and his colleagues, of whom Carnot was 
one, and abroad under its new general, Bonaparte. Con- 
quest again followed conquest. New republics, on the 
model of the French, sprung up like mushrooms in Hol- 
land, Liguria, Lombardy, Sardinia, Switzerland, etc. The 
fresh elections in May, 1797, nevertheless yielded a royal- 
ist majority in the Councils, the upshot of which was that 
Barras and the majority of the directors by the following 
September, when things had come to a crisis, had to call 
in the aid of the army under General Augereau to over- 
awe the legislature. This succeeded, and a large number 
of members, including some " rats " of the old Dantonist 
party, were exiled on the ground of Royalist intrigues 
to overthrow the Republic. Carnot and Barthelemy were 
driven from the Directory. The latter now became prac- 
tically a dictatorship, with Barras as head dictator. 

Most of the powers, tired of prosecuting an adverse 



io8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

war, were glad to make terms of peace. England was 
soon the only belligerent remaining. But the Directory, 
without money, and having only the armies to fall back 
upon, could not afford to bring about a complete cessation 
of hostilities. Bonaparte, after having subdued the Con- 
tinent, about this time returned to Paris, the most popular 
jnan in France. Barras, feeling his presence dangerous 
at home, invited him at once to undertake the task of 
subduing the British power. He readily acceded, and 
the brilliant Egyptian campaign entered upon with a 
view to India, was the result. The elections of 1798, 
which were, unlike those of the previous year, too radical 
to please the Directory were annulled, but those of the 
following year, 1799, yielded the same result. 

Meanwhile a new coalition had been formed, one of 
the principal factors of which was Russia. The unpopu- 
lar Directory could no longer hold out against public 
opinion. Negotiations between the various parties were 
entered into without issue, and the government at home 
was in g-reat confusion, when Bonaparte suddenly ap- 
peared on the scene, having left his Oriental army in the 
hands of General Kleber. A conspiracy was at once 
formed, led by the old Constitutionalist, Sieyes, to place 
dictatorial authority in the hands of the successful gen- 
eral. The Senate, seduced by the report of a pretended 
Jacobin insurrection in the departments, which was to 
shortly reach Paris, consented to decree the removal of 
both houses of legislature to the palace of St. Cloud, near 
Paris, and to placing Bonaparte at the head of the mili- 
tary forces of the capital. 

This was on the 9th of November, 1799 (i8th Bru- 
maire VII.). The following day the legislature removed 
to St. Cloud. The " Council of Ancients " met in the 
" Gallery of Mars," one of the apartments of the Palace, 
and the council of five hundred in the " Orangery." The 
" Council of Five Hundred " unanimously swore to the 
existing Constitution, refusing to ratify the powers given 



END OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 109 

by the other body. Bonaparte was driven away with 
cries of " Down with the tyrant ! " etc. His brother, Lu- 
cien Bonaparte, who was president, finding nothing was 
to be done, came out and harangued the troops, stating 
that the Assembly was being intimidated by a minority of 
the members with drawn daggers. Bonaparte, thus forti- 
fied, then gave orders for the " Orangery " to be cleared 
by the military, which was immediately effected. Thus 
was the Consulate founded. From this to the consecra- 
tion as Emperor in 1804 was but a step. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE NATIONAL PROPERTY 

The course of the Revolution cannot be properly esti- 
mated without taking into consideration the results of 
the confiscation of the property of the nobility and clergy. 
In the Directoral Constitution of 1795 (III.) we read. 
Article 374 : " The French nation proclaims, as guarantee 
of public faith, that after an adjudication legally consum- 
mated, of the national goods, whatever may be its origin, 
the legitimate acquirer thereof cannot be dispossessed." 
The same clause, but slightly modified, is introduced into 
the Consular Constitution of 1800 (VIII.), and the Im- 
perial Constitution of 1804 (XII.). There is more than 
meets the eye in these articles. They are the issue and 
sanction of a series of transactions which established a 
wealthy plutocracy on the ruins of the old feudal aris- 
tocracy of France. 

The first property to be sold was that of the Church. 
This, which in a sense may be considered as having been 
held in trust for the poor, was primarily disposed of, not 
to benefit them, but to reduce the public debt and pre- 
serve the State from financial ruin. The sales began in 
1789, and the period of greatest activity was from Au- 
gust, 1790, to January, 1791. French companies, English 
companies, Dutch companies, disputed for the spoil, only 
a comparatively few lots falling to the share of the peas- 
antry, since no restriction was laid on the amount sold 
to any one purchaser. The sales were the more easily 
effected, inasmuch as only a small percentage of the pur- 
chase-money had to be paid down. When the time came 
for the second instalment, the money for payment was, 

no 



THE NATIONAL PROPERTY m 

naturally, considering the vast extent of the purchases, 
in most cases not available. This led many of the specu- 
lators to favor the Revolution, and all of them to urge 
on the foreign war, both of which would serve as an ex- 
cuse for postponement. War was accordingly pro- 
claimed in April, 1792, and the following August the 
throne was overturned. After the latter event it was 
decided that the lands and property of the emigrant aris- 
tocrats which now came into the market should not be 
sold haphazard and en masse like the ecclesiastical prop- 
erty, but should be duly apportioned into small lots, 
which the small cultivator might hire or purchase on 
easy terms. 

This concession on the part of the middle classes was, 
however, simply the result of fear of imminent foreign 
invasion. No sooner had the armies of Dumouriez 
driven the enemy back than the new Assembly, the Con- 
vention, announced that the partition of the public lands 
must be indefinitely postponed on account of the difficulty 
of the operation. During the winter '92-3 the movable 
effects of the " emigrants " came into the possession of 
speculators and jobbers by means of sham sales. So fla- 
grant was the abuse, that the Convention had to step in, 
but without much effect. After the fall of the Giron- 
dists the partition of the lands among the peasantry was 
again definitely ordered. The second grand campaign 
now intervened, and France was for the moment con- 
verted into one vast camp. Exceptional measures were 
the order of things all around, and comparatively few 
small transfers were effected. This did not prevent the 
confiscation both of the lands and movables of the no- 
bles and suspects going on at a greater pace than ever. 
But it was various agents of the Government in the 
departments who made vast fortunes out of them by 
their clever mancEUvring. Two-thirds of the houses in 
Paris were now "national property." The Convention 
decreed that " goods " to the value of one milliard should 



112 PHE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

be reserved for the citizen soldiers returned from the 
wars. This milHard, we need scarcely say, remained a 
promise to the end of the chapter. 

The Committee of Public Safety, early in '94, ordered 
the sale of the confiscated lands to be proceeded with, 
but while recommending that the principle of partition 
should be adopted, did not insist upon it, the net result 
of the new sales being that large tracts of public land 
were sold in the lump as before, but this time they went 
into the possession of a new class of thieves ; to wit, the 
victuallers of the armies, who had already made large 
fortunes out of their contracts. After Thermidor, this, 
of course, went forward on a larger scale than ever. 

Robespierre, through his agent, St. Just, now got a 
decree passed that indigent patriots should be indemni- 
fied out of the goods of the " enemies of the Revolution," 
but this decree was merely procured to maintain his popu- 
larity with the people, as was proved by the fact that he 
never so much as attempted to put it into execution. 

The 9th of Thermidor arrived without the working- 
classes of the towns having touched any of the " goods " 
of the emigrants, the clergy, or the suspects, while the 
peasantry had to be satisfied with here and there a few 
crumbs in the shape of the partition of communal lands. 
Barere had said that they had coined money on the Place 
de la Revolution, but the working-classes can certainly 
not be accused of having shared in this ill-gotten gain. 
Thus, even while the masses were nominally in power, 
the middle classes succeeded in "nobling" the Revolu- 
tion. 

After the insurrection of Thermidor, the traffic in the 
" national property " proceeded more unblushingly than 
ever. As soon as the maximum was abolished, however, 
the plutocracy found it even more to their interest for 
the moment to hocus the currency than to purchase land, 
at however reduced a money value. By procuring a 
practically unlimited issue of paper they succeeded in 



THE NATIONAL PROPERTY 113 

reducing the value of the assignats to next to nothing. 
The forestalling of the necessaries of life, especially grain, 
which was the immediate cause of the various insurrec- 
tions after Thermidor up to that of Baboeuf, was also a 
stupendous source of profit. The reopening of the 
Bourse, the repudiation of the hypothec of the assignats 
on the confiscated lands, the latter a piece of thieving of 
the most impudent character, followed in the natural 
course of things. Lotteries were instituted, the prizes 
of its victory. It is well known how the Americans 
have tried for thirty years past to throw off this yoke, 
which were the "national property." One deputy even 
had the impudence to propose to take back the lands 
already distributed among the peasantry. But this was 
thought to be too risky. Meanwhile, the victories of 
the armies under Bonaparte opened fresh fields and pas- 
tures new for every form of swindling by means of pro- 
visioning "contracts." A cessation of the war would, 
indeed, have been a grievous thing for the rising plutoc- 
racy of France. Under the Directory the exploiters 
flung themselves anew upon the as yet undisturbed terri- 
tories. Everything was now in their own hands. No 
stone was left unturned to diminish for the nonce the 
market value of this property. The price which was paid 
in depreciated paper taken at the nominal value was in 
most cases simply farcical. 

But all means of robbery were not yet exhausted. The 
army contractors refused to be paid any longer in assign 
nats, but insisted on large sums being placed to their 
credit in the books of the national debt, thus saddling 
themselves in perpetuity on the French people. Deputies, 
Government agents, generals, contractors, engaged in a 
mad scramble which could make the most out of the 
situation. The masses of France had but two purposes 
in their eyes — to labor at home at starvation wages, in- 
sufficient to support life for any but the strongest, and 
to serve as food for powder abroad. The vast territorial 



114 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

estates of the feudal aristocracy, and the house property 
of the towns, thus passed into the hands of another and 
a meaner set of lords. The new middle class of France 
was consolidated economically and politically. Verily the 
French Revolution was a success — for them! And now 
having reached the summit of their ambition, it only 
remained to kick over the ladder which had helped them 
up. The hearth, the throne, and the altar must be re- 
established on a new basis ; we must have done with revo- 
lution and all its wicked ways! said they. Revolution 
must be henceforth a thing accursed! But a Republic, 
no matter how safeguarded against intrusion of the 
" common people " seemed to many an insufficient guar- 
antee under the existing circumstances for the newly 
created " order." A military dictator, who knew how to 
smother insurrections in the birth, he was the man for 
the situation, and his name was — Napoleon Bonaparte. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

CONCLUSION 

The French Revolution closes in a final and definite 
manner an epoch in the world's history. The middle 
ages, proper, it is true, came to an end with the i6th 
century. But they left a kind of afterglow behind them 
in the shape of the centralized and quasi-absolute prince^ 
doms and monarchies which prevailed during the 17th 
and i8th centuries; in the continuance in rural districts 
and the smaller towns of the old methods of industry 
but slightly, if at all, modified; in the perpetuation un- 
abated, for over a century at least, of medieval and re- 
naissance superstitions and habits of thought; in short, 
in the survival of most of the external forms of the old^ 
world civilization, decayed like the foliage of a St. Mar- 
tin's summer. The conversion of the feudal hierarchies 
into centralized monarchies but imperfectly freed the 
middle classes ; the combined or workshop system of pro- 
duction had not in any marked or violent manner revolu- 
tionized industry; the learning of the renaissance had, 
to a large extent, merely given a quasi-scientific and 
systematic shape to old habits of thought. 

The political, moral and social changes leading up to 
modern times were of course going on all the while, and 
were observable to the truly observant, but were not at 
that time of a " run and read " character. 

The French Revolution definitely closes this epoch. 
It does even more. It constitutes the dividing line be^ 
tween the world of to-day and all past ages whatever. 
The Revolution was scarcely over when the electric tele- 
graph appeared on the scene. At the same time the idea 



it6 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of the steam engine was working in the heads of the 
ingenious, and the closing years of the century saw the 
first of the new industrial machines established in the 
factories of the North of England. New stage-coach 
roads, canals, and other " improvements " sprang up in 
all directions. A couple of decades or so more and the 
great industry was to start the metamorphosis of human 
production and distribution; yet another, and the rail- 
way was to begin the transformation of the face of nature 
and the externals of human life in other directions. In 
short, from the French Revolution we advance straight 
by leaps and bounds to the modern world. 

The city of Paris well typifies the progress. One 
hundred years ago, in 1789, it was (unlike London, which 
in its medieval form was destroyed by the fire of 1666), 
to all intents and purposes a medieval city, substantially 
the Paris of Victor Hugo's " Notre Dame," a city of 
feudal fortresses, high-walled enclosures, crooked, nar- 
row, unpaved streets. The Committee of Public Safety 
in 1793 began alterations, partly with a view of giving 
employment to distressed workmen. The changes went 
on gradually, till, in 1859, Haussmann, under Napoleon 
TIL, totally destroyed what remained of old Paris, and 
laid out the city in the form we see it to-day — a city which 
would be as foreign to Danton, Robespierre, or Marat as 
San Francisco itself. The Paris of centuries perished in 
little more than fifty years. What is true of Paris is 
true of Europe — of the whole of existing civilization. 
The Europe of 1789 was in the main the Europe of the 
later middle ages — of the renaissance — ^but in the last 
stage of decay. It had been practically dead for over 
two centuries, and like Edgar Poe's hypnotized dead man, 
it fell to pieces with a sudden convulsive awaking after 
proclaiming itself dead. No " restoration " could really 
bring it together again. The new world of our time had, 
meanwhile, grown up, with its science, its inventions, its 
intense self-consciousness, and placed insurmountable 



CONCLUSION «7 

barriers between us and our naive and simple-minded 
ancestors. The old Merry England, for example, the 
England of the fairy ring and the Maypole, had passed 
away for ever. In politics the reign of the bourgeoisie 
with its oppression resting on cunning and hypocrisy 
had shut out the possibility of an enduring reaction to 
the coarser and more direct methods of feudal domina- 
tion. 

There are several minor points worthy of notice af- 
forded by the course of the French Revolution. One 
feature of the period, already alluded to, its perpetual 
reference to classical models, and its somewhat mechani- 
cal attempt to make history repeat itself — ^to reproduce 
the Republics of ancient Greece and Rome in eighteenth- 
century France — can never be left out of sight. Every 
man*s head was full of Plutarch's Lives. All men, how- 
ever little else they knew, seem to have had at least a 
superficial schoolboy smattering of Roman history. Al- 
most every speech and every newspaper article of the 
time bristles with references, to Coriolanus, Cato, Cicero, 
Brutus, or Csesar. In fact, Roman history was to the 
French Revolution very much what the Jewish annals, 
contained in the Bible, were to the English rebellion 
under Charles I. "We," or rather modern science and 
historical criticism, " have changed all that." We no 
longer look to the past as a model for the society of the 
present or the future. The doctrine of evolution has 
taught us that human society, like everything else, is a 
growth, and that though corresponding and analogous 
phases certainly do recur in history, we can yet never 
argue back from one period to another, as though there 
had been no intervening development, or as though the 
economical, intellectual, and political conditions were sub- 
stantially the same, or might be made the same. 

Another point the Revolution teaches us is the effec- 
tive power of minorities. The Terror itself (whatever! 
view we may take as to its justifiability), it cannot be 



ii8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

denied, was kept up for nearly two years by a compara- 
tively small but energetic minority in all the towns of 
France. Outside this minority (the Jacobins) there was 
a floating mass of inert sympathy with the objects of 
Sansculottism, and a belief in the necessity of drastic 
measures in view of the situation. Beyond this, again, 
was the vast mass of inert stupidity and indifference 
which was effectively cowed. The active enemies of the 
Revolution were, of course, reduced to silence. 

It is significant, again, to notice that most of the great 
crises were connected with affairs on the frontiers. The 
loth of August and the September massacres were the 
response to Brunswick's manifesto, and the march of the 
enemy on the capital respectively. The 31st of May was 
directly brought about by the invasion of the new coali- 
tion and the disorganization of Dumouriez's armies, con- 
sequent on his defection. Finally, the 9th of Thermidor, 
and the abolition of the '* Terror," followed on the disap- 
pearance of the last trace of danger from the foreigner 
consequent on the battle of Fleurus. 

The extraordinary enthusiasm which we find, the reck- 
less readiness of all alike to inflict and to suffer death, 
might lead us to suppose the men of the time to have been 
a race of born heroes, or monsters, or both. The average 
of them were neither the one nor the other. They were 
the products of social forces beyond their control. The 
feeling of the all-importance of the public interest carried 
all before it. Prior to the Revolution, they were prob- 
ably neither more courageous nor more truculent than 
ourselves. The same courage and the same truculency 
might manifest itself in any man of character under like 
circumstances. Even Robespierre was, as Carlyle sug- 
gests, probably neither better nor worse than other attor- 
neys to start with. But in his case ambition ultimately 
assumed the mastery over his whole personality. This 
was partly owing to the fact that he was undeniably a 
man without a vi(^e (in the ordinary sense of the word), 



CONCLUSION tig 

Now only very exceptional men can afford lo be without 
the ordinary vices of mankind, and Robespierre was cer- 
tainly not one of these men. With his ascetic Rous- 
seauite notions of republican austerity, he had suppressed 
his natural appetites, the consequence being that all the 
morbid elements in his character, having no other outlet, 
ran into the channel of self-idolatry and morbid ambition. 
The first condition of a well-regulated man is to know 
how to properly distribute the quantum of vice with 
which a bountiful nature has endowed him. A false 
morality teaches him to suppress it. But this he can sel- 
dom do, and if he succeeds, it is at the expense of all or 
much that is distinctive in his character. In tearing off 
the coating of vice, he tears off his skin with it. The 
usual case, however, is that the vice is not got rid of at 
all, but only forced into some out-of-the-way channel. And 
whenever vice is concentrated, it is bad. When all the 
vice of a character is focused on any single one of the 
natural appetites, a man becomes a sot, a satyr, a glutton, 
a confirmed gambler, etc. Now Robespierre sat upon all 
the usual valves. He and his ascetic band poured scorn 
on the Hebertists and the Dantonists alike for the " loose- 
ness " of their lives. But having closed up all the ordi- 
nary exits, his vice came out none the less, but concen- 
trated in the form of a truculent, remorseless ambition, 
unparalleled in history. 

The rank and file of the actors in the Revolution it is 
difficult, for the reasons before stated, to characterize by 
any of the ordinary ethical standards. The best of them 
did things we cannot always approve while sitting com- 
fortably in our chairs, the worst of them showed much 
genuine and disinterested devotion to the cause of the 
people. Were we called upon to name the five men 
whose aims were probably the purest, we would mention 
Marat, Chaumette, Clootz, Pache, and Baboeuf. Danton, 
apart from the disputed question of his bribery, was a 
mere politician, who only interested himself in social 



I2e> THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

questions, when at all, in so far as they immediately af- 
fected the political situation. 

The issue of the French Revolution was, as we have 
seen, the modern world of great capital and free trade, 
as opposed to the old world of land and privilege and all 
that that change implies. In the storm and stress of out- 
ward events, we are apt to forget the work done during 
the Terror era by the committees of the Convention — 
administrative, educational, and legal work, which helped 
to build up the modern governmental system. The 
" Code Napoleon " itself was based on the labor of Mer- 
lin de Douai and his committee. In France, the political 
and juridical side of the great change was most promi- 
nent; in Germany, the philosophical and literary; in 
England, the industrial and commercial. While French 
politicians were engaged in establishing the Republic, 
German thinkers were engaged in founding 19th century 
thought, and English inventors in establishing the new 
modes of production and locomotion. But while the 
medieval organization of society held together for cen- 
turies, the modern is already showing signs of approach- 
ing disintegration. Why is this? We answer, because 
the latter contained, from the first, in its very nature, 
the seeds of dissolution. The capitalistic system of ne- 
cessity feeds upon itself. Competition, which is the 
breath of its life, necessarily also destroys that life. It 
may be that the "opening up" of Africa, and other as 
yet unexploited territories, will give the system a further 
lease of existence, lasting some decades, but the end can- 
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